Caitlyn Shockey
November 13, 2012
Public Health Community Trends
For this assignment, I chose to call
and interview a Family Practitioner from my hometown, Mesa Arizona, named
Robert Laufer. When I asked him what the
top 5 public health trends in Mesa are, I was surprised and found it
interesting how easily he could identify and explain them to me. The top 5 trends in Mesa, Arizona are
Diabetes, Obesity, Preventative Examinations, Whooping Cough, and skyrocketing
health insurance premiums.
He said that the first public health
trend in Mesa was Diabetes type II. Over
the last few years, he has had more patients being diagnosed with
diabetes. This is very concerning to
public health officials because Diabetes is a chronic disease, meaning that you
have it for the rest of your life. Diabetes type II is directly related to
lifestyle. It is more prevalent among
overweight unfit individuals who eat improper food groups such as those high in
fats, simple carbohydrates and sugars.
Dr. Laufer said that this lifestyle is a growing demographic group in
America thus increasing the amount of people getting diagnosed with Diabetes.
Obesity was the next trend he talked
to me about. He made it clear that this definitely
is not only an increasing trend in Mesa.
It has become one of the top trends in all of America. He said that in the last ten years, the
number of obese children and adults has been multiplying very fast. The lack of physical activity is a major
reason that this is becoming such a problem.
The other major factor contributing to obesity is like that of Diabetes;
the large consumption of unhealthy food by adults and children. Dr. Laufer said that Americans eat much
larger portions each meal than they need to in order to obtain their health. He
predicted that this trend of increasing obesity is not going to start
decreasing and will probably remain a top trend in Mesa and America for a long
time.
The third trend is preventative
examinations. I didn’t know exactly what
those were so he first explained that they are the appointments that patients make
with their doctors that provides a complete set of prevention services,
counseling, education and disease screening.
Usually the people who are making these appointments are average-risk
adults. The reason Dr. Laufer said that
the number of these examinations performed in doctors is increasing, is because
of the national trend toward encouraging preventative medicine. Patients are now getting discounts off of
their insurance rates if they have preventative examinations performed.
Fourth, Dr. Laufer talked to me
about the whooping cough. The real name
for this disease is Pertussis. He said
that it is a cough that people get that causes uncontrollable and very violent
coughing. This coughing makes it
extremely hard for its victims to breath.
The name “whooping” was adopted because of the sound made when the
patient is trying to take a breath. The
first reason why this trend is increasing is that it is highly contagious. The main reason however, is the lack of
vaccination of adults against Pertussis.
He told me of how about 20 or 30 years ago, the Pertussis portion of the
triple combination Diphtheria/Pertussis/Tetanus was taken out. That left only the Tetanus and the Diphtheria
in the vaccination. The thought was that
adults could not get Pertussis so it was no longer needed. With time however, that theory has been
proven incorrect. As a result of this,
there has been an increase in Pertussis because our immune response to that
disease is getting less with time.
The last trend is skyrocketing
insurance premiums secondary to the increased cost of health technology. A main reason that insurance is becoming so
expensive is that there are new and better technology improvements coming out
for health care. The catch is that even
though this new technology is expensive, it may be beneficial to health care by
helping prevent disease in the long run.
For example, MRI’s and new forms of chemotherapy are extremely expensive
but are at the same time catching disease and cancer earlier than ever
before. He also said the next biggest
cause for the soaring health insurance premiums are the patients
themselves. They expect the very best of
everything regardless of the cost. Even
though doctors tell them they are close to 100% sure they don’t have cancer,
they still want to use these expensive machines to get tested just incase. All of these things cost money and are
causing our health insurance premiums to rise, resulting in less individuals
being covered because they simply cannot afford the high costs.
I really enjoyed doing this
assignment. I realized after talking
with Dr. Laufer that public health officials are very aware of the trends that
are forming in the nation and especially within their community.
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