Project Info Public Health Current Event Health and Public Health Issues

Health and Public Health Issues: Project Info Public Health Current Event

Public health is one of the top priorities for any country and its economic budgeting since healthy people contribute to economic strengthening more effectively. The higher number of ill people, the more costs government would have to incur for their treatment and prevention. This paper aims to explore a public health topic presented in the media these days and relevant to Healthy People 2030 objectives, behaviors, or conditions.

Description of Health Condition

From Healthy People 2030 objectives, the health condition selected for this paper is ‘diabetes.’ Over 30 million people are impacted by diabetes in the United States, making it the seventh leading cause of death (Healthy People 2030, n.a.). The number of diagnosed people is up to 28.7 million people, adults majorly (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2022a).

Principally, diabetes is the body condition in which food is broken down in sugar form and then released into the human body’s blood (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2021b). When the sugar level is high within the bloodstream, it directs the pancreas to produce more insulin, depicting high blood sugar levels. When the body suffers from such a condition, there is insufficient insulin, and the cell response is low. The blood sugars remain and stop further processing, making the kidneys suffer.

According to Healthy People 2030, the objectives for reducing the number of people suffering from this public health issue indicate that two objectives have improved results. Two objectives showed little or no detectable change, while nine showed only baseline-met objectives (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2022). Another two showed developmental progress in meeting the set objectives in the particular area.

There are different types of diabetes, and most of them affect adults of age 45 years. Type 2 diabetes mostly develops in this age group, leading to one in 10 Americans and roughly 90-95% of them suffering from the illness. However, more teens, children, and young adults have recently been falling victim to diabetes, which is of extra concern to the public health department (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2021c).

Characteristics

Different types of diabetes have different health conditions and epidemiology. For instance, type 1 diabetes is insulin-dependent, where deficiency in the production of insulin is experienced by the body (World Health Organization, 2021). Individuals suffering from type 1 need a daily dose of insulin to meet the body’s requirements and ensure stability. In type 2 diabetes, which is non-insulin-dependent, the body’s unproductive use of insulin causes the condition (World Health Organization, 2021). It is mainly prompted by excessive body weight and low physical inactivity, prevalent in 95% of adults.

Effects on the body are serious and could be severe in the form of two-thirds of the adults at risk of experiencing heart attacks, which is a fatal outcome (World Health Organization, 2021). Heart strokes could also be conducive to the same condition as reduced blood flow creates distress for the heart. Other effects include damage to foot nerves and difficulties in neuropathy, risk of foot ulcers, and serious infections leading to the removal of the affected limb or body part (World Health Organization, 2021). Further, when diabetes enters into serious stages, loss of eyesight could be another problem and long-term damage to the retina and its blood vessels. Blindness prevails in more than one million people with diabetes (World Health Organization, 2021). Kidney failure cannot be ignored as it is one of the prominent body failures due to diabetes.

Treatment of diabetes includes a long-term change in diet and daily engagement in physical exertion with low intakes of sugar and glucose (World Health Organization, 2021). Physical activity of at least 30-minutes every day is suggested with moderate intensity. These are the predominant factors that could cause continuing damage to blood vessels. Similarly, specialists also recommend tobacco cessation to prevent the complexities of diabetes mortality and cardiovascular damage.

Medical interventions for the treatment of diabetes include daily insulin for type 1 diabetes patients, while type 2 diabetic patients could be prescribed medications and a certain amount of insulin (World Health Organization, 2021). Keeping a close monitor of blood pressure level is proposed. Taking care of feet is highly significant when diabetes hits the body, including foot hygiene, wearing comfortable shoes, patient self-care and self-management of foot conditions, and going to the physicians for regular check-ups of feet (World Health Organization, 2021).

Brief Summary of the Article

The selected article discusses the prevalence of the disease worldwide, which prompts the use of insulin in more people in 2021 compared to the previous year (LaMotte, 2021). Despite extensive education and preventive interventions for diabetic people worldwide, 537 million people still live with diabetes. More than 7 million adults have died globally due to diabetes, almost one in ten individuals. The condition was aggravated with the advent of the pandemic, Covid 19, since approximately 40% of the people who died of the virus had diabetes. The article discusses the possibility of a heightened risk of mortality for people who had diabetes as the physical reactions to Covid-19 worsened their condition leading to death.

Moreover, the article cites some eye-opening facts as they mention that 14% of the people hospitalized for Covid developed diabetes. Type 1 and 2 diabetes were evident in small children and adults during this pandemic (LaMotte, 2021). Still, the experts are not sure of how diabetes reacts to the Covid virus since the steroids to prevent Covid could have reacted with abnormalities of blood sugar and stress of the pandemic, which made the conditions poorer for diabetic individuals.

In further sections of the article, there are ways of prevention in which early detection of the illness is crucial. Ways have been stated to reduce the risk, such as adding one-third of a cup of fruit to the daily diet, regular exercise minimizing 54% of the risk of type 2 diabetes, and positive psychological health outcomes could be seen by employing stress reduction (LaMotte, 2021).

Current Research Available

Research indicated that increased population, food abundance and scarcity in certain regions, lack of physical activity, and eventual changes in diet had caused more incidence of diabetes in the last four decades (Trikkalinou, Papazafiropoulou & Melidonis, 2017). Keeping in view the existing prevalence worldwide, it has been anticipated that the number of affected adults will be 642 million globally by 2040.

Diabetes has affected the quality of life (QoL), which is defined as physical, mental, or social well-being and does not necessarily involve an absence of any disease (Trikkalinou, Papazafiropoulou & Melidonis, 2017). World Health Organization (WHO) has defined it as an individual’s perceptions of culture and value systems conducive to his fulfillment of the life goals and expectations to maintain certain standards with appropriate health conditions (Trikkalinou, Papazafiropoulou & Melidonis, 2017). Diabetes does affect QoL; however, it varies with relevance to ethnicity, cultures, beliefs, environment, genders, diets, lifestyle trends, and socioeconomic status.

The significant symptoms of type 1 diabetes encompass fatigue, lack of energy, polyuria, polydipsia, extreme weight loss, the healing process of wounds being slowed down, frequent infections, and adversely affected vision (Kharroubi & Darwish, 2015). The symptoms of type 2 diabetes are inevitable hypertension, dyslipidemia, excessive weight gain, nephropathy, and effects on ovarian hyperandrogenism, kidneys, and liver. The diagnosis of certain types is related to a typical amount of glucose present in the blood. Fasting plasma glucose equal to or higher than 126 mg/dL signifies the persistence of the illness (Kharroubi & Darwish, 2015). Several other tests are known to diagnose different types of diabetes in several age groups, with which HbA1c and FPG are the most notable ones.

To prevent diabetes, long-term changes in lifestyle and diet are recommended in most studies worldwide (Uusitupa et al., 2019). Although genes and environmental factors play a major role in determining the health conditions of the individuals, the maximum results of various geographical regions revealed that lifestyle and diet changes showed prolonged prevention of diabetes risk for up to ten years.

Studies have explored that diabetes is more prevalent in ethnic minorities and low socioeconomic groups due to health disparities, complexities, and fatality rates globally (Stetson, Minges & Richardson, 2017). Females who have diabetes are more likely to develop cardiovascular disease than men. In line with the previous evidence, social determinants play a key role in shaping the intensity of diabetes in a diversity of individuals. A walking routine, physical activity, and access to the grocery store where eating items are obtained affect every person’s diet (Stetson, Minges & Richardson, 2017).

Relevance to Public Health

Healthy People 2030 objectives have a variety of objectives to reduce the proportion of the population suffering from diabetes. The objectives include a reduction in the number of cases diagnosed every year, prompting a greater number of people to get their eyes checked every year, a reduction in mortality rate due to diabetes, increasing the number of people who gain health education regarding diabetes, increases in the number of people using insulin to prevent diabetes, increase in the number of people who should get kidney tests, increase the proportion of adults getting ACE inhibitors or ARBs every year, decreasing the proportion of people getting limb amputations due to diabetes, decreasing the number of people visiting hospitals for getting insulin, and decreasing the number of people suffering from obesity with health education and diabetes prevention programs, etc. (Healthy People 2030, n.a.).

The connection of diabetes to these objectives is indispensable as obesity, health education, and reduction in the use of insulin through these measures are the main prevention guidelines that have been mentioned in the literature evidence in the previous section. Best practices, including lifestyle and diet changes, should be adopted to gain lifelong positive health outcomes for diabetes prevention.

Healthcare professionals have a key role in preventing diabetes and meeting Healthy People 2030 objectives since nurses and medical secretaries work with patients closely and have more information about their genetic and environmental conditions impacting their diabetic status (Sorensen et al., 2020). Their professional approach supports devising a person-centered intervention along with self-management and self-adherence to reduce harmful effects physically and psychologically. Also, community-based interventions for minorities and low-income groups are excellent since healthcare experts work in inter-professional teams with a common mission and goals for sharing knowledge, fostering adherence, and increasing efficiency with efficacy (Sorensen et al., 2020).

Data from Healthy People 2030 showed that some of the objectives had been met, but some are still only meeting the targets while others are below their target achievements.

Along with lifestyle and diet changes, relevant education programs, and medications for mitigating diabetes risk, the psychological impacts of the disease need to be addressed vigorously. Anxiety and depression and a patient’s age, ethnicity, race, and sex should be studied and applied to certain underserved segments of the population since healthcare access might aggravate their condition (Seng et al., 2021). There is a clinical significance for the population segmentation, so the intervention strategies for alleviating psychological impacts should be applied systematically.

Some specific objectives need to be completed with more force, such as disseminating health education for diabetes and increasing the proportion of adults using insulin, and monitoring their daily blood sugar (Healthy People 2030, n.a.).

Interest in Topic

With the excessive economic burden diabetes poses on the government, which, according to American Diabetes Association (ADA), was $327.2 billion in 2017, the topic is of interest. The diagnosed people with diabetes account for 81% of the entire population, calculated at $13,240 cost per person. The predicted risk of the disease is far greater than what is understood by the professionals. Moreover, the selected article has complicated the functioning of the disease and reactions to the pandemic, which has still not ended, leading the experts to think of other creative ways to address the challenge. Cost-effective ways of reducing the impact of disease are to be researched with technological infusion so that significant reductions in the number of people using insulin and other noteworthy objectives of Healthy People 2030 could be met more speedily.