Lauren Poet
2/27/13
Public Health
Public Health Community Trends
For
this paper, I interviewed Eric Edwards, The Director of Health Promotion in the
Utah County Health department. Mr. Edwards was kind enough to send me 11
different trends that were apparent and said I could select the five that
seemed to be the most prevalent in my community. I grew up in California, but
have been living in Utah for the past 5 years. I decided to focus on trends
that seemed apparent in both communities. The trends I decided tot talk about
were tobacco use, obesity, prescription drug abuse, injuries as the leading
cause of morbidity and mortality, and a stronger Emphasis in Primary
Prevention.
First,
in the stronger emphasis in Primary prevention, Mr. Edwards talked about how
for this to be effective sometimes life-style changes are needed. For example,
my mother went to the doctor’s and was told that she almost had diabetes, so
she had to start taking preventive measures and begin to change her diet. It
was later found that the tests were inaccurate, and she was not in danger of
diabetes, but she continued her new way of eating to prevent diabetes anyways.
However, sometimes this is not always helpful. Mr. Edwards also mentioned that
problems can arise from “the environment or genetics,” and so it is harder to
prevent them. For example, both my uncles on my mother’s side and my mother are
deaf in one ear. I went to the doctor and found I was susceptible to the same
condition. Because of this, I have to take preventive measures and not listen
to music that is too loud to prevent hearing loss – however because this is a
genetic problem, not listening to loud music may not be enough. In order to
make this a more effective field, Mr. Edwards mentioned that information must
be gathered as to how people live. This information can be used to prevent
further disease or problems.
Another
trend affecting the community is that of injuries leading to morbidity and
mortality. When I was in high school, there was a boy who died in a terrible
accident when he was riding his bike – without a helmet. Because he did not
have a helmet, he hit his head and died. This is an example of injuries that
lead to mortality. Mr. Edwards specifically mentioned that using helmets was a
good way to prevent these injuries, if the boy had had a helment, he would
probably still be alive. Mr. Edwards also mentioned that car safety is
essential for safety in this trend. He also mentioned that “50% of all
unintended injury deaths are associated with automobile accidents.” Therefore, we must make sure that we are
safely buckled and that the passengers (included) are also safely buckled and
situated in the car. I think, though he did not mention it, I is also important
to get your car checked upon so that it does not spazz out and cause an
accident.
Obesity
was also mentioned as a trend in the community. Mr. Edwards noted that obesity
is dangerous because it can cause other diseases, like diabetes or heart
failure. The really tragic thing is that it is affecting younger and younger
people – every year the people affected with diabetes 2 seem to become younger.
In order to prevent this tragedy to increase, Mr. Edwards suggests that there
be plenty of physical activity and that the children eat more healthily. I think,
though, that this could tie back to what was said before about the health
prevention – it is hard for people to change their lives so suddenly! However,
if we teach it to children at a young age, and use this for prevention, we may
be able to decrease obesity.
The
next thing trend that seemed to be apparent was tobacco use. Though we live in
Utah, this is still a problem. Second hand smoke can cause a great amount of
problems too, so this does not affect the people smoking only, it affects
people around them. Mr. Edwards suggests teaching the community about the
dangers of tobacco to prevent the dangers of tobacco. I feel like the negative effects of tobacco are pretty well
known, so I agree more with his other suggestion of making tobacco policies to prevent
tobacco use in certain areas. This is tricky because it is an addictive
substance. Even if people know the effects of smoking, they still do it. For
example, I knew a lady when I was younger who smoked all the time, and one day
(mind you I was very young) I went to her crying telling her that she was going
to die if she didn’t stop smoking. She told my mother later that she knew I was
right, but could not stop smoking. Even though people know the dangers of
smoking, they still smoke, which is why I think it would be more effective to
make smoking policies as well as educating people about smoking to prevent new
people from starting to smoke.
Finally,
I would like to talk about prescription drug use. This was a big problem in my
high school in Highland. In California, it was not as big of a problem because
people were doing other sorts of drugs (for example a kid brought a giant tub
of ecstasy so one of my classes – he got caught) but in Utah it seems to be a
big deal. According to Mr. Edwards, this is a big trend, one that almost
reaches “epidemic levels.” Obviously, there needs to be something done about
this because it seems to cause a great many deaths as well. I think this can be
prevented by education on the danger of prescription drugs. But also to have
patience that use the drugs keep the drugs on them at all times, so others
cannot access the drugs. That or they have to keep a tally of how many drugs
they have and how many they take so they can tell if any are missing.
There
were numerous other trends that Mr. Edwards suggested to talk about. But I
thought that these 5 trends were very apparent in our community and should be
addressed.
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