Lindsey Downing

I was able to interview Jim Geddie from my hometown. He is the health care administrator that oversees Arbor Hills Rehabilitation Center and Generations Health Care in San Diego and was able to give me a lot of insight as to some of the current health problems and public health trends that he’s seeing in his facilities.

            The first one is that there has been a huge trend of a younger population coming in to the rehabilitation center. About ten years ago he said that the average age of residents was around 72-75 years old. Now their average is around 55. He thinks that it is probably due to unhealthier lifestyles and people are just getting sick at a younger age.

            The second trend that he has seen is a huge increase in mental instability. He said that recently he has seen more cases of Alzheimer’s, depression, dementia than he ever has in the past. He explained that the biggest problem with the trend is that they don’t have enough space for all of the people with this diagnosis. The facilities have a limited amount of space to be able to deal with and care for patients that have mental diseases so they don’t have anywhere to go. This has been a huge increasing problem.

            The third health trend he has noticed is a large increase in cardio pulmonary disease. He said that the main reason for this is a lifetime of smoking. The patients that he deals with everyday are the age of the baby boomers and back when they were younger smoking was the cool thing to do. At that time the health risks of smoking were not well known so people did it freely and became addicted. Because of this the people now getting older and coming to his rehab facility have had a lifetime of smoking and have developed many heart and lung problems from it.

Another thing that he said they have struggled with in their area is a shortage of nurses. With the amount of elderly people that they have they need a lot of staff to help care for them. Especially because at their age and with their limited abilities they need someone at almost all times to help them do even the simplest of things. Because of this they need a lot of nurses. He talked about how they don’t provide an easy access for people to become nurses and the limited amount of money available for health care there is a shortage of them.

            The last thing he said he has seen as a trend is an increase in diabetes. An increase in obesity is obviously hand in hand with this trend. As junk food has become more easily accessible, affordable and widely advertised, people have been turning to these foods in the last couple decades. As a result diabetes and obesity have become much more of a problem. Because it is the younger generations that are more affected by the new trend of junk food and because younger generations are now coming to the rehab center, he has seen it as an increasing problem.