If you are an optimist who thinks that medical care and the country's overall state of health is progressively improving, you are, sadly, mistaken.
Your assessment would also be starkly at odds with the conclusions of authoritative health experts who have just wrapped up their annual health report on America.
America's Health Rankings for 2011 flatly notes this: Gains that have been made in the nation's collective health through bettered cardiovascular outcomes, a growing number of reformed smokers, quality control measures that are reducing incidents of misdiagnosis and other factors are offset equally by much that is negative.
The annual health survey is a combined effort of the United Health Foundation, the America Public Health Association and the Partnership for Prevention.
Board member Reed Tuckson, M.D., cites to a number of "alarming trends." He says that, if they are left unchecked, they "will put further strain on our country's already strained health care resources."
Candidates for concern are many, but they centrally coalesce around what health experts note as being three fundamental issues, namely, these: obesity, diabetes and child poverty.
As for obesity, the report notes that there is not a single state with an obesity rate below 20 percent. Concerning diabetes, the trend is unquestionably upward, as is the case with the number of American children living in dire need.
Tuckson says that the Rankings report "sends a loud wakeup call that the burden of preventable chronic disease will continue to get worse unless we take urgent action."
Source: Medical News Today, "Obesity and diabetes undermining America's overall health" Dec. 8, 2011
