Benjamin Lambson

Community Trends

I am working towards going to medical school in the future and have been interested in living in Arizona. My uncle Lee lives and works there as a doctor and I was able to ask him some questions about the current public health issues and trends that he has seen in the area.

1. The first issue that Lee pointed out was that people are becoming less inclined to immunize their children. He stated that he has seen a trend that people are becoming more “natural” and think that when they don’t immunize their children that they will be exposed to illnesses in a natural manner and will then develop resistance to those sicknesses. This is a problem because many deaths come from illnesses that can be prevented from proper immunization. They have even began in his county to start giving free Hepatitis A and B vaccinations to give an incentive to help vaccinate the growing population.
2. The second issue he brought up was that of overall health and nutrition. He told me that many people are coming into his clinic with personal health related problems such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and obesity. The area in which he lives is seeing a growing number of individuals who are becoming less healthy. He stated that it was because of poor personal choices. They don’t eat healthy and they don’t exercise. They decided to participate in the national nutrition month of march. This is a media based campaign that focusses on the importance of making educated health decisions and developing good personal eating and physical exercise habits.
3. I then asked him if he had seen any trends in sexually transmitted diseases in his area. He told me that in general they were seeing a decrease in reported cases of syphilis this year from last year but that they were seeing an increase of gonorrhea and chlamydia. He said that the usual education approach to teaching about sex and sexually transmitted diseases was to just teach abstinence. He does not feel that this is sufficient for the growing population of youth.
4. He then shared with me that cancer was a trending problem in Arizona. He said that Arizona had the 14th highest amounts of new cancer cases in the nation. He said that  they are actually seeing a decrease of cancer cases in Arizona though which is wonderful! Even many patients that have cancer are able to live with it throughout their lives as long as they get treated for it and continue to see doctors on a regular basis.
5. Lastly he mentioned drug abuse. They are seeing younger adolescents coming in with drug addictions to various illegal drugs. What was surprising to me is that they are seeing an increase in usage and abuse of prescription drugs. They are working on making it harder to get these prescription drugs so that less abuse occurs. They also have health promotion teams go out to schools and communities to educate the population about the seriousness of these problems but base the education off of more of a “you choose your life” campaign. They are seeing success with this.