Teen Smoking, Births Decline but Obesity and Diabetes Show Worrisome Increases
[Highlights from Health, United States, 2003 with links to complete report and individual sections]
Americans are living longer, becoming more health-conscious and yet more chronically ill all at the same time, according to the National Center for Health Statistics annual report of the nation's health.
Overall life expectancy in the United States in 2001 was 77.2 years, an increase of nearly four months from 2000, when it was 76.9 years. The rise continues an upward trend broken only once in the last decade—a slight dip from 1992 to 1993—and nearly unbroken for the century. In 1900, a newborn American could expect to live 47.3 years. In 1950, life expectancy had grown to 68.2 years.
Longevity, however, is not spread evenly between the sexes or races.
Life expectancy for women was more than five years longer than for men—79.8 years compared with 74.4 years—in 2001, according to the report. In 1990, the difference was seven years. The gap in life expectancy between blacks and whites narrowed a similar amount over the same period, with whites living 51/2 years longer.
In addition to living longer, people were spending more on health care and, by some measures, showing more salutary behavior.
In 2001, health care spending in the United States was $1.4 trillion, up 8.7 percent from 2000. That increase was bigger than the 7.4 percent increase from 1999 to 2000. Annual increases averaged 11 percent in the 1980s.
In 2001, about 83 percent of mothers received prenatal care in the first trimester of pregnancy, up from 76 percent in 1990. There were substantial ethnic differences in this key indicator, with 69 percent of American Indian mothers seeking early prenatal care, compared with about 90 percent of women of Japanese or Cuban ancestry.
In 2001, 77 percent of children younger than 3 were vaccinated. For children in poor families, the number was 72 percent.
The percentage of people older than 65 who received the influenza vaccine dropped slightly, to 63 percent, in 2001. Over a dozen years, the percentage of older adults who had received the pneumococcal vaccine—which protects against the most common type of bacterial pneumonia—nearly quadrupled, to 54 percent.
The percentage of high school students who reported in surveys that they had smoked cigarettes in the last month fell to 29 percent in 2001. It was 36 percent in 1997, the report said.
The birthrate for teenage girls was 45 births per 1,000 girls, the lowest rate in more than 60 years, according to the report.
However, there were also trends of worsening health.
The percentage of children classified as "overweight" increased from 7 percent in the late 1970s to 15 percent in the late 1990s. A similar increase was also seen in adolescents.
In 2001, about 38 percent of high school girls, and 24 percent of boys, did not engage in moderate or vigorous physical activity. That is similar to results in the late 1990s.
Perhaps the most significant trend is the rise in diabetes, which in 2002 afflicted 6.5 percent of adults. In 1997, 5.3 percent had the disease. The disease increases a person's risk of heart attack, kidney failure, infection, amputation and blindness. Being overweight greatly increases the chances a person will develop the disease.
In 2001, about 22 percent of people 45 and older who were admitted to U.S. hospitals were diabetic.
"The projections are that diabetes will continue to be a bigger problem because of the increases in obesity," said Amy Bernstein, the health services researcher in charge of the report.
The National Center for Health Statistics is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The 471-page report can be found at www.cdc.gov/nchs/.
source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45108-2003Oct4.html 5oct03
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