Health Indicators

Instructions:
Respond to at least two other student’s postings with substantive comments. Response posts to peers have no minimum word requirement but must demonstrate topic knowledge.
• Substantive comments add to the discussion and provide your fellow students with information that will enhance the learning environment.
• References and citations should conform to the APA standards.
• Remember: Please respect the opinions of others, even if their views differ. In other words, disagree professionally and respectfully.
• Plagiarism is never acceptable – give credit when credit is due – cite your sources.

PEER 1: P T
Illinois key health indicators
Key health indicators in Illinois are fertility rate (53.8 births per 1,000 women), teen birth rate (13.6 per 1,000 females 15-19 years of age), infant mortality rate (5.3 infants deaths per 1,000 birth), life expectancy of 76.8 years in 2020, marriage rate (3.9 per 1,000), divorce rate (1.6 per 1,000), leading cause of death heart disease, drug overdose death (28.1 per 100,000), firearm injury death rate (14.1 per 100,000), homicide rate (11.2 per 100,000), Covid-19 death rate (12.9 per 100,000) (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2023). Leading causes of death in Illinois are heart disease, cancer, Covid-19, accidents, stroke, chronic lower respiratory disease, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, kidney disease and influenza/pneumonia (CDC, 2023).
How Health indicators influence health status
Health indicators like mortality and life expectancy for a specific population provides reliable, valuable information of an individual that is part of that population (Sokoya et al., 2022). When health indicators are well designed these directly measure individual health status and is a way to determine effective preventive initiatives and measure their outcomes (Sokoya et al., 2022). Health indicators are needed to give people an idea of the health status of that specific population and to help determine better health opportunities that can benefit the health for all and decrease the healthcare costs.
Direct and indirect burdens of health risk behaviors and disease in Illinois
Some of the leading causes of death in Illinois on 2021 were heart disease (26,282 people), stroke (6,768 people), cancer (23,613 people), Alzheimer (4,028 people) and diabetes (3,388 people) (Illinois Department of Public Health [IDPH], 2021). $4.1 trillion is the annual healthcare expenditure of the U.S. and 90% of it goes for those with chronic and mental health conditions (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2022). Heart disease and stroke costs the U.S. health care system $216 billion per year; cancer cost will be more than $240 billion by 2030 (CDC, 2022). Diabetes in 2017 incurred in $327 billion total cost; Alzheimer’s disease costs by 2050 is projected to be more than $1.1 trillion (CDC, 2022). As we can see there is direct burden both in the health of the residents of Illinois due to the high incidence of chronic diseases and in the healthcare costs in Illinois and in the whole U.S. There is also an indirect burden as seen in the increase mental health crisis and increase of substance abuse in all the nation.
References
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2022). Health and economic costs of chronic diseases. https://www.cdc.gov/chronicdisease/about/costs/index.htm
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2023). Illinois key health indicators. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/states/illinois/il.htm#print
Illinois Department of Public Health. (2021). Leading causes of death by age group, Illinois residents, 2021. https://dph.illinois.gov/content/dam/soi/en/web/idph/publications/idph/data-and-statistics/vital-statistics/death-statistics/Leading-causes-by-age-2021.pdf
Sokoya, T., Zhou, Y., Diaz, S., Law, T., Himawan, L., Lekey, F., Shi, L., Gimbel, R. W., & Jing, X. (2022). Health indicators as measures of individual health status and their public perspectives: Cross-sectional survey study. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 24(6), e38099. https://doi.org/10.2196/38099

PEER 2: A F

In the state of Wisconsin, in the recent year of 2022, we were given a letter grade of a C, somewhere in the middle ranking of the states within the Midwest for health report card. In the state of Wisconsin, they look at how long people are living and also the quality of their life. It is seen that there are disparities amongst these groups with race, place and education levels that lead to poorer outcomes in health overall because they are lacking in opportunity. These people also feel as they do not have the resources to have care provided which factors into the quality of life as well.
As a state is given a report card, there are different avenues that are used to get there. Things are broken down by life stages: infants, children and young adults, working age adults and older adults. Then they look at health disparities like gender, geographic location, socioeconomic status, and race. Released in March 2022, most recent report card averaged a grade C.
Of the most recent report card in Wisconsin, they looked at the highlighted areas that need more focus to make improvements. The biggest area for improvement was maternal and infant health. There continued to be poor outcomes and disparities affecting both maternal and infant health that across the board this is an area of focus that is needed. They looked at the statistics of preterm birth rates, of which this area alone received a D grade. Although there has been an influx of pregnancy, there has also been an influx of pregnant mothers that are not receiving the proper before, during and after pregnancy care. There are many avenues to follow this down, the ultimate goal is to able to provide better resources and make things more readily available to these patients to seek care. While this category does not help our overall score, there is more to blame than just the patients. We as future providers need to make care accessible for patients of all ages, genders, race and socioeconomic status. We need to find the resources to help these people get the care they need to better serve our communities.

2022 March Of Dimes Report Card For Wisconsin. (n.d.). March of Dimes | PeriStats. https://www.marchofdimes.org/peristats/reports/wisconsin/report-cardLinks to an external site.
University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute Department of Population Health Science (2016). Health of Wisconsin report card 2016. Retrieved from: https://uwphi.pophealth.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/316/2018/01/Report-Card-2016.pdf
Staff, N. 2 6. (2022, April 8). Report card on health of people in Wisconsin identifies opportunities for improvement. WGBA NBC 26 in Green Bay. https://www.nbc26.com/news/local-news/report-card-on-health-of-people-in-wisconsin-identifies-opportunities-for-improvement

For the writer: I am sharing what I wrote as my post. This is just for your information if it helps as background. There is no need to respond or do anything else with this.
Thank you.

• Locate and review your state’s health report card.
I live in the state of California. One can see California’s health report card at this link:
https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/DO/CDPH%20Document%20Library/StateOfPublicHealth-2020.pdf

• Identify your state’s statistics and key health indicators, including how they influence health status.
California’s key health indicators are fertility rate, teen birth rate, infant mortality rate, life expectancy (at birth), marriage rate, divorce rate, leading cause of death, drug overdose death rate, firearm injury death rate, homicide rate, and COVID-19 death rate (CDC, 2023).

We can use Health indicators to predict results about the state of health of a population. These indicators enable the determination of effective preventive services and verify their outcomes. Obtaining the public’s perspective on specific health indicators is the first step toward prioritizing them for analytical and clinical use (Sokoya et al., 2022).
Self-rated health status is the predominantly used health indicator (Sokoya et al., 2022). Well-designed health indicators are critical tools needed to measure individual health status accurately.

• Discuss the direct and indirect burdens of health risk behaviors and disease (i.e., costs, morbidity, premature mortality, etc.) identified within your state.
Understanding which diseases pose the greatest threat to health and well-being helps public health practitioners and policy-makers decide how to use limited resources for maximum benefit (NCCID, 2016). The human and economic costs that result from poor health are frequently described as burden of disease (NCCID, 2016).
Direct costs are the value of resources used in the treatment, care, and rehabilitation of people with the condition under study. Indirect costs represent the value of economic resources lost because of disease-related work disability or premature mortality (Løkke et al., 2014). Indirect costs estimate constitute only the production loss related to disease-related work disability (Løkke et al., 2014).
The leading diseases and causes of death in California are pneumonia, tuberculosis, injury, cancer, Alzheimer’s, and cardiovascular (CDPH,2020). The spending plan for last year provided a $33.7 billion General Fund for health programs. This amount was an increase of $6.7 billion, or 25 percent, compared to the revised 2020 21 spending level (LAO, 2021). According to AHR, the years of potential life lost before age 75 per 100,000 population in California in 2020 was of 7,020 years of life (2020).

Resources

America’s Health Rankings. (2022). High health status in California. AHR.
https://www.americashealthrankings.org/explore/annual/measure/Health_Status/state/CA

California Community Burden of Disease Engine. (2022, February 6). California, both sexes, 2017. https://skylab.cdph.ca.gov/communityBurden/

California Department of Public Health. (2020). 2020 state of public health briefing. https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/DO/CDPH%20Document%20Library/StateOfPublicHealth-2020.pdf

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2023, January 10). California key health indicators.CDC.https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/states/california/ca.htm

Legislative Analyst’s Office. (2021, October 22). The 2021-22 California spending plan. Health.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4465

Løkke A, Hilberg O, Tønnesen P, Ibsen, R., Kjellberg, J., Jennum, P. (2014). Direct and indirect economic and health consequences of COPD in Denmark: a national register-based study: 1998–2010. https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/4/1/e004069

National Collaborating Centre for Infectious Diseases. (2016). More than just numbers: exploring the concept of “burden of disease”. https://nccid.ca/publications/exploring-the-concept-of-burden-of-disease/

Sokoya T, Zhou Y, Diaz S, Law T, Himawan L, Lekey F, Shi L, Gimbel RW, Jing Xia, J. (2022, June 21). Health indicators as measures of individual health status and their public perspectives: cross-sectional survey study. Med Internet Res 2022;24(6):e38099. https://www.jmir.org/2022/6/e38099