Top 5 Public Health Trends

Kristen Bodine
HLTH 100
Public Health Community Trends

My name is Kristen Bodine and I had the privilege of interviewing Juliet VanEenwyk. VanEenwyk received her PhD in Epidemiology at the University of Illinois, and she now works as the State Epidemiologist for the Washington State Department of Health. VanEenwyk told me that the main issues affecting citizens in her home town of Olympia, Washington were growing disparities, nutrition, infectious diseases and antibiotic resistance, tobacco use, and environmental problems.

Growing Disparities: VanEenwyk explained that the separation between the rich and the poor in her area is widening. The rich are receiving more benefits while more and more people in her town becoming needful for such benefits. She says that a lot of it has to do with growing up in the home of a single parent. Families with both parents are better able to provide for their family, so while divorce rates and single parent rates have been increasing, the problem of trying to provide for a family alone is taking its toll. Additionally, wealthier families are able to spend their money on higher education and more extracurricular activities to build up their children while single parents and other circumstances are simply doing their best to raise enough money for the necessities and their children's ability to go to college.

Nutrition and Physical Health: VanEenywk states that Olympia is suffering from obesity due to a lack of nutrition and physical health. Nutritionally, people are resorting to quick and easy junk foods on their way to school or work; foods that satisfy the body but are not healthy. To make matters worse, citizens are eating these foods and offering no way of getting rid of the fat stored. "People are becoming more and more lazy," VanEenwyk says. "Rather than walking to school or even taking a bike, they will take a car or some other form of transportation. There is no physical activity anymore." And with the media growing, people in Olympia, Washington are spending more and more time on the couch eating and playing games. It is unhealthy.

Infectious Diseases and Antibiotic Resistance: Similar to places all over the world, Olympia suffers the sickness of their citizens to infectious diseases. The problem, as explained by VanEenwyk, is the fear of antibiotic resistance, or the infectious microorganism growing immune to the antibiotics used to control it. She feels that people are focusing so much of their time and energy on taking medicines to cure things like the common cold (something that can not be fixed) that their body is becoming immune to the antibiotics in that medicine necessary for more dangerous and curable sicknesses. VanEenwyk feels that the way to improve the problem is somehow lure people away from resorting to medicine first thing when feeling sick, but rather planning their life in a healthy manner to strengthen the body to resist the bacteria on its own.

Tobacco Use: VanEenwyk explained that tobacco use in mainly found in groups of people with less income or education, and ethnic or racial minorities. She stated that this is the result of their lack of health care to cleanly cure their sicknesses. Instead, they resort to tobacco use and other substances and the rate of death and disease has increased. With a goal to improve the problem, Public Health programs in the area have been working to raise awareness of the situation and inform Olympia's people of the dangers of tobacco use. VanEenywk does not feel that the problem can be completely fixed, but it can be helped.

Environment: This was the issue VanEenwyk seemed most concerned about. She feels that this is a problem that if it is not somehow fixed, it will effect the people of Olympia on a long-term scale. She emphasized problems with climate changes, fires burning down resources, glaciers shrinking, and predators damaging the forests.  She also feels that Olympia is in danger of losing clean water. Washington receives a lot of rain, but she says they get their water from snow packs and if the climate continues to change and glaciers continue to shrink, Olympia will be in danger of losing a valuable resource.