Public Health - Santé Publique

Life expectancy for white women took a small but unexpected dip in 2014, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported last April. And nearly a year ago, a paper from two leading economists revealed that life expectancy for whites has been declining for nearly two decades, with almost all of the decrease concentrated among men and women without a college education.
The causes, they reported, had nothing to do with increased rates of heart disease or cancer. Rather, the data revealed sharp increases in suicides and drug-related deaths among less-educated whites.
The social decay in some areas that are driving those numbers helps explain the anger shaping this year's presidential election. But legitimate concern for the economic status of those left behind by deindustrialization has overshadowed the somewhat brighter picture of overall health painted by the latest CDC National Health Interview Survey of 35,000 Americans, which was released last week. On virtually every indicator—with the sole exceptions of the related issues of obesity and diabetes—the U.S. is better off or the same today as we were 10 or 20 years ago.
On this annual self-evaluation of health, exactly two-thirds of Americans reported that they are in either excellent or very good health. That measure has increased by nearly a full percentage point over the past decade. Obviously, we still have work to do. It remains nearly 2 points below where we were in the late 1990s. The number of uninsured has declined sharply because of the Affordable Care Act. The CDC reports that in January to March of this year, that number fell to 8.6% of the population, down from 9.1% the previous year and 16% in 2010.
As a result, access to healthcare continues to improve for most Americans. This year, 87.5% of respondents indicated they had a regular place to go for medical care, statistically unchanged from the previous year but up from 85.4% in 2010—the year the ACA passed. In addition, the number of people reporting they didn't obtain needed care for financial reasons, which increased from 4.3% in 1999 to 6.9% in 2010, was back to 4.3% this year. [..]

The one area where the survey revealed worsening conditions was in the related rates of obesity and diabetes. Nearly 31% of respondents said they were obese, slightly higher than the year before and significantly higher than the 20% self-reported rate in 1997.

Via rob halkes