Health issues in the U.S.
Table of Contents
According to a report by the Centre for Disease Control (CDC), the leading causes of death in the United States over the last century include chronic cardiovascular diseases. These cardiovascular conditions include; conditions reported to high blood pressure, congestive heart failure, acute myocardial infarctions, and coronary artery diseases (Sidney et al., 2016). Another major contributor to the rate of mortality in the United state over the past one year includes diabetes mellitus, chronic lung disease, cancers plus other chronic diseases that affect the American people.
With such high contributions to the disease burden of the United States, the public health department has had to devise mechanisms to lower or eradicate the diseases among the American population. The public health has majorly taken up preventive strategies in the fight against these ailments. The preventive strategies have begun right from the primary level to the secondary and then t the tertiary level (Main & Menard, 2013). The public health has started right at the grassroots levels by classifying each community or group with the highest prevalence of any of the above diseases. The strategy enables the public health to identify the reasons why a specific community is predisposed to a particular illness. Once the risk factors are established, it becomes a lot easier to handle the ailment.
Another strategy employed by the public health department is a routine screening of people. Routine screening enables early detection of some of the chronic diseases that can be managed if identified early. For instance, cancers have had proper management when discovered in the initial stages before metastasis (Sidney et al., 2016). The final and equally effective strategy that the public health department has used to avert these diseases is sensitization and health education (Sidney et al., 2016). The American people have been taught about the risk factors of the leading killer conditions and how to live to avoid them.
References
Main, E. & Menard, M. (2013). Maternal Mortality. Obstetrics & Gynecology, 122(4), 735-736. http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/aog.0b013e3182a7dc8c
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) | MMWR. (2016). Cdc.gov. Retrieved 16 December 2016, from https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/index.html
Sidney, S., Quesenberry, C., Jaffe, M., Sorel, M., Nguyen-Huynh, M., & Kushi, L. et al. (2016). Recent Trends in Cardiovascular Mortality in the United States and Public Health Goals. JAMA Cardiology,1(5), 594. http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jamacardio.2016.1326
