Gert van der Hoek
In Memoriam - Editor, Senior Moderator
dec 8, 2016
Last year, we learned about a troubling trend in the US population. Death rates were creeping up for middle-age white people, particularly women. The researchers who identified the problem in a blockbuster study attributed the change to economic struggles and accidental poisonings ? mainly caused by prescription painkiller and heroin use.
But a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a more disturbing finding: It?s not just middle-age white folks who are dying sooner ? it?s everyone.
..........
In 2015, the rates of eight of the top 10 leading causes of death in America increased ? including heart disease, chronic lower respiratory diseases, unintentional injuries, stroke, Alzheimer?s disease, diabetes, kidney disease, and suicide. (The trends for flu and pneumonia didn?t change.) According to Xu, it?s unusual to see a negative trend for so many health measures.
"Mortality is rising across a wide variety of illnesses," wrote Dartmouth health economist Jonathan Skinner in an email, "so it's not just the opioid epidemic. And as a consequence, it's not entirely easy to figure out what to do about it."
...................
What?s troubling here is that many of these causes of death are preventable. We know how to stave off heart disease and diabetes, and yet more people are dying and at younger ages from these causes.
"[This] is about poor health care and health behaviors ? smoking, obesity, exercise, exposure to toxins," said University of Maryland health inequality researcher Philip Cohen. "That means this is not about a failure of science to cure disease, but about people not having the wherewithal, or maybe the will, to take care of themselves and their family members."
LINK TO FULL ARTICLE
Last year, we learned about a troubling trend in the US population. Death rates were creeping up for middle-age white people, particularly women. The researchers who identified the problem in a blockbuster study attributed the change to economic struggles and accidental poisonings ? mainly caused by prescription painkiller and heroin use.
But a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a more disturbing finding: It?s not just middle-age white folks who are dying sooner ? it?s everyone.
..........
In 2015, the rates of eight of the top 10 leading causes of death in America increased ? including heart disease, chronic lower respiratory diseases, unintentional injuries, stroke, Alzheimer?s disease, diabetes, kidney disease, and suicide. (The trends for flu and pneumonia didn?t change.) According to Xu, it?s unusual to see a negative trend for so many health measures.
"Mortality is rising across a wide variety of illnesses," wrote Dartmouth health economist Jonathan Skinner in an email, "so it's not just the opioid epidemic. And as a consequence, it's not entirely easy to figure out what to do about it."
...................
What?s troubling here is that many of these causes of death are preventable. We know how to stave off heart disease and diabetes, and yet more people are dying and at younger ages from these causes.
"[This] is about poor health care and health behaviors ? smoking, obesity, exercise, exposure to toxins," said University of Maryland health inequality researcher Philip Cohen. "That means this is not about a failure of science to cure disease, but about people not having the wherewithal, or maybe the will, to take care of themselves and their family members."
LINK TO FULL ARTICLE