United Health Foundation recently released America’s Health Rankings Senior Report – A Call to Action for Individuals and Their Communities.
It finds preventable chronic illness at troubling levels among seniors. Nationwide, about 80 percent of seniors are living with at least one chronic condition, while 50
percent of seniors have two or more chronic conditions, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Challenges such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease will lead to diminished quality of life and severe economic consequences if left unaddressed. With a rapidly growing and sicker Medicare population, annual spending on Medicare is expected to increase by 90 percent in the next decade.
More than 30 percent of seniors in fair or better health report that they are not physically active, which increases their risk for cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hypertension, obesity and premature death. Obesity affects more than 25 percent of adults ages 65 and older.
Poverty prevents many seniors from meeting their health needs. Nearly 10 percent of U.S. adults ages 65 and older live at or below the federal poverty line.
Minnesota is at the top of the list of healthiest states for older adults. Mississippi is ranked 50th as the least healthy state for older adults.
Minnesota ranks in the top 5 states for a high rate of annual dental visits, a high percentage of volunteerism, a low percentage of food insecurity, a high percentage of creditable drug coverage, and ready availability of home health care workers. Minnesota also ranks first for all health outcomes combined.
Determinants and Outcomes
The 34 measures that comprise America’s Health Rankings® Senior Report are of 2 types — determinants and outcomes. Determinants represent those actions that can affect the future health of the population, whereas outcomes represent what has already occurred either through death or disease. For a state to improve the health of its older adult population, efforts must focus on changing the determinants of health.
There are 4 categories of health determinants: Behaviors, Community and Environment, Policy, and Clinical Care.
Behaviors
Behaviors are potentially modifiable through a combination of personal, community, and clinical interventions. This category includes measures for smoking, chronic drinking, obesity, underweight, physical inactivity, dental visits, and pain management. In the Senior Report, Hawaii ranks 1st for Behaviors, while Alaska ranks 50th.
Community and Environment
Measures of community and environment reflect the daily conditions that influence a healthy lifestyle. Community and Environment is further sub-divided into 2 categories: Macro and Micro.
Macro Community and Environment measures the larger community context of supporting the health of older adults, whereas Micro Community Environment measures the immediate, mostly in- home, support that affects personal health and includes social support, food insecurity, and community support.
Policy
Policy includes the availability of resources to support aging adults. This includes
the percentage of low-care nursing home residents, credible drug coverage, and geriatrician shortfall.
Clinical Care
Clinical Care can enable people to live longer and healthier by treating and managing existing conditions and preventing others.
These finding should not surprise people. Individuals can control most of these preventable conditions. Unfortunately we have a culture that has become even more dependent on the health care system and secure in the knowledge there might be a pill, implant, procedure and cure for anything that comes up. Incentives combined with intense community support may be the only way to coax people to take action. That moves into policy areas too. And clinical providers have a role in educating people and moving toward a wellness not sickness model. Unfortunately the incentives for them are not geared toward this behavior even though they are talking about it a lot.
In the end we all must take self-responsibility for our health.
Leave Your Comments