I talked to Karen Martinek who is a Epidemiological Nurse and Kathy
Allely, MPH, who is the Section Chief of the Chronic Disease Prevention and
Health Promotion Division of the Department of Public Health, State of Alaska. They helped me identify the following public
health trends in Alaska.
1. Alaska has the highest rate of Tuberculosis
in the United States
The
first trend they mentioned was that Alaska is consistently the state in America
with the highest rate of Tuberculosis. According to data collected in 2011, Alaska
had 9.3 cases of tuberculosis per 100,000 residents, which is about 5.9 cases
per 100,000 more than the national average.
Much of this difference is attributed to the Native Alaska population.
Many of the members of Native Alaskan tribes live in very secluded areas of the
state in which access to medical care is scarce. They live in close knit
communities and since tuberculosis is a communicable disease when one member
contracts the disease it spreads quickly. Coupled with relative inaccessibility
to health care, this increases the incidence of tuberculosis in Alaska
.
2. The STD rate in Alaska is increasing
Every
year since 2000, Alaska is one of the top two states in America for cases of
Chlamydia and currently leads the nation. Alaska is also second in the nation
for cases of Gonorrhea in 2011. The vast majority of the cases are found in
people under the age of 30 who typically have more sexual partners. With this
increase in STD’s, especially Chlamydia (which when left untreated, is a major cause
of infertility in women), there has been a decrease in fertility throughout the
state. The major reasons Ms. Martinek
believed that sexually transmitted disease was on the rise was twofold.
Firstly, during the prolonged winter season, people will seek out companionship
and, in some cases, since symptoms can be mild, the infected individual is
unaware they are affected. The other
reason for the increase is the inaccessibility of many native Alaskan tribes to
health care or their reliance on ancient traditional medicine.
3.
Alaska is
seeing an decrease in childhood immunization rates
The National
Immunization Survey in 2009 ranked Alaska 49th among all the states
for their childhood vaccination coverage rate. Currently the coverage rate in
Alaska is around 56.6 percent which is incredibly low considering the national
coverage rate is 70.5 percent. Ms.
Martinek listed a number of reasons, such as cultural differences, poverty, and
the lack of understanding many people have of the importance of childhood
vaccination, which have lead to Alaska being named by the Associated Press the
state with the highest ‘opt out’ vaccination rate for kindergartners (did the
Associated press cite a more authorative source?). In order to combat this
problem the Department of Public Health has focused on a variety of approaches,
including strengthening partnerships with healthcare providers, surveying parents
to determine perceived barriers to immunization, increasing educational
opportunities for providers and patients, using a computer system for
development and publication of immunization coverage rates, and finally working
with healthcare providers to get the information out.
4. Alaska has seen a sustained increase in
obesity.
Around
60 percent of Alaskan adults and 26% of high school aged children in Alaska can
be deemed obese or overweight. This number has been consistently increasing annually
for the past thirty years. Much of the problem is influenced by the environment
in Alaska, namely that when it gets cold and dark in the winter people become
more physically inactive. Other contributors to the increase in obesity are an
increase in the amount of alcohol consumed, a decrease in physical education classes
in the schools, and the difficulty Alaskans have in finding fresh fruits and
vegetables at reasonable prices. To combat this problem, the state legislature
has allotted 923,000 dollars to help develop the Obesity Prevention and Control
Program which, over the course of 10 years, hopes to significantly decrease the
obesity rate through education, training, and physical activity programs in the
schools and parks throughout Alaska.
5. The number of suicides per year in Alaska
has been consistently high.
The
state of Alaska has a suicide rate that is double the national rate according
to the 2010 report and this relationship hasn’t changed since then. Millions of
dollars have been put into program funding and community efforts and programs
but despite all these efforts Alaskans are still resorting to suicide. The
populations which account for the most deaths are the native Alaskan peoples
and the elderly. One of the weaknesses in the programs in Alaska is that there
simply aren’t enough support groups for survivors and their loved ones to cover
the state. Only six communities in Alaska have support groups but around 180
communities are affected by suicides every year. The state is too big and the
population is to spread out for an effective suicide support group to be
everywhere it needs to be.
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