Health Rankings Draw Concerning Picture for Latinos

By John Benson, Voxxi

The 23rd edition of America’s Health Rankings report reveals a stark picture for the Hispanic community and the nation in general. The report is the largest health survey in the world.

“Health is a result of our behaviors, our individual genetic predisposition to disease, the environment and the community in which we live, the clinical care we receive, and the policies and practices of our health care, government, and other prevention systems,” explains the report.

Based on this, the state-by-state snapshot of population health, which is developed by the UnitedHealth Foundation, reveals that Americans are experiencing consistent increases in life expectancy but that their longer lives are burdened with chronic illness that results from  lifestyle-related added risk factors.

“When we looked at measures that were more related to preventative medicine like obesity and diabetes, as well children living in poverty, those really outweighed a lot of the advances we saw on some of the other measures,” United Healthcare West Region Medical Director Dr. Roberto Madrid told VOXXI. “We also know that a lot of pediatric experts tell us kids in elementary school and junior high probably won’t outlive the previous generation. That’s something that hasn’t happened in 150 years.”

The report, released Tuesday, also shows U.S. Hispanics are suffering from higher rates of obesity that in turn lead to diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

The new America’s Health Rankings report shows that 66 million people in the United States are obese, with about 26 percent of obese people reporting sedentary lifestyles. However, for Hispanics that rate is 31 percent.

According to the America’s Health Rankings report, no state has less than 20 percent of its population considered obese.

“The impact is much more than just health,” Dr. Madrid said. “It also affects our health system from an economics perspective. Every person with diabetes realized about two-and-a-half to three times the cost of someone who doesn’t have diabetes.”

In fact, a 2010 report from the UnitedHealth Center for Health Reform and Modernization indicated if nothing changes, diabetes and prediabetes will account for approximately 10 percent of total health care spending by 2020. By 2030, medical costs associated with treating preventable obesity-related diseases are estimated to increase by $48 billion to $66 billion per year in the United States, according to F as in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America’s Future 2012, a report released by Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF).

Dr. Madrid said diabetes due to obesity is preventable however. He explained that a 5 percent weight loss per every 100 pounds reduces the risk of developing diabetes by 60 percent. And that’s without the use of any medication.

America’s Health Rankings at a glance

• Life expectancy in the United States is 81 years for women, putting the country 32nd among the 193 reporting nations of the World Health Organization, and 76 years for men, putting the nation 34th among all countries.
• According to the World Health Organization, this region of the Americas – which includes all of North, Central and South America–leads the world in prevalence of overweight and obesity.
• If sedentary lifestyle was abated in the U.S., we would gain 0.78 years of life expectancy (Lancet, July 18, 2012).  And, another recent study shows going from sedentary to mild activity increases life expectancy by 1.8 years (PLOS Medicine, 2012).
• The infant mortality rate in the U.S. in 2009 was seven deaths per 1,000 live births, putting us 40th among WHO nations.
• The U.S. also has the highest mortality rate from treatable conditions when compared with 16 other high-income countries.
• Diabetes, much like obesity, is at epidemic proportion.  The percentage of adults with diabetes ranges from 12.0 percent or more of the population in West Virginia, South Carolina, and Mississippi to less than 7.0 percent in Colorado and Utah. The national median of adults with diabetes is 9.5 percent.  These rates capture only diagnosed cases of diabetes; actual diabetes rates are likely even higher than this.
•  A recent report from the CDC estimates that, by 2050, between 20 percent and 33 percent of the U.S. population will have diabetes as a result of poor diet, little physical activity, increasing obesity, and an aging population.

America’s Health Rankings and Hispanic health 

As far as contributing factors to Hispanic health issues, there are plenty.

Hispanics have the highest uninsured rates of any racial or ethnic group in the United States. According to the CDC, 30.7 percent of the Hispanic population is not covered by health insurance, as compared to 11.7 percent of the non-Hispanic white population.

In 2009, the Census Bureau reported those without health insurance coverage varied among Hispanic subgroups: 33.6 percent of Mexicans, 14.9 percent of Puerto Ricans, 23 percent of Cubans and 42.4 percent of Central Americans.

Inextricably tied to healthcare is also the Hispanic poverty rate, where socioeconomic factors affect health status. Poverty rates have risen by 35.4 percent in 10 years (21.4 percent in 2012 compared to 15.8 percent in 2002), making this one of the nation’s fastest growing trends. More so, the poverty rate for Hispanic children is 32.3 percent.

According to a new report by the Center for American Progress 42.4 percent of Latinos of Central American descent and 33.6 percent of Latinos of Mexican descent are uninsured. Collectively, 30.7 percent of Hispanics lacked health insurance during the year 2010, compared to 11.7 percent of the non-Hispanic whites.

The last factor, behavior, is the most concerning according to the America’s Health Ranking report; however, Madrid stressed this is the one issue that can be changed no matter where one falls on the income scale.

“About 50 percent of our individual health is going to be due to our behaviors–do we smoke, drink, get some exercise, eat well, use sunblock or seatbelts?” Dr. Madrid said. “Generally speaking, the Hispanic community is younger than the country as a whole. So if they’re younger and heavier at this point with their sedentary lifestyle being at a higher percentage, we can foresee that these issues will get bigger and have more impact on our system as the years go by if we don’t anything to stop that.”

The America’s Health Rankings report also shows that Hispanics aren’t the only ethnic group with poor diets. Basically, the entire country is getting heavier and more sedentary.

Here are some additional insights from the report:

• 37 percent of the Hispanic population in Texas is obese, the largest margin in any state
• Mexican Americans are twice as likely to be diagnosed with diabetes than other Hispanic groups
• Hospitalizations related to chronic health conditions such as diabetes are two to three times more likely among Hispanics
• Less than 1/4 of Hispanics have ideal body mass
• Cancer surpassed heart disease as the number one killer among Hispanics last year

Overall, the answer to America’s and Hispanic health issues is simple: exercise more and regulate your diet.

“It’s doing little things that make a big difference later,” Dr. Madrid said. “It’s incorporating more physical activity in your daily life. Also, it helps having a community or a family endeavor. Where if I’m a smoker and want to quit smoking, hanging around smokers is not going to make my job easier. What I hope people take away from the report is their lifestyle is not contributing to a healthier outcome. At the end of the day, you’re responsible for your health and there are a lot of things you can do to keep yourself healthy.”

This article was first published in Voxxi.

John Benson is employed as a fulltime freelance writer writing for local/national outlets.