From the Journals

Life and health are not even across the U.S.

Publish date: April 11, 2018

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Findings should motivate clinicians and policy makers

This report on Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study data profoundly and powerfully illuminates U.S. health trends over time and by geography. There is much unfinished business for us, nationally and at the state level.

Clinicians and policy makers can use the rankings to evaluate why many individuals are still experiencing injury, disease, and deaths that are preventable; in doing so, the entire nation could move closely resemble a United States of health.

Clinicians could use the results to help guide patients through evidence-based disease prevention and early intervention, a strategy that has led to decreases in death due to cancer and cardiovascular disease over the past few decades.

At the same time, policy makers could use GBD 2016 results to reevaluate current national attitudes toward disease prevention.

Howard K. Koh, MD, MPH, is with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston. Anand K. Parekh, MD, MPH, is with the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington. The comments above are derived from an editorial accompanying the report from the US Burden of Disease Collaborators ( JAMA. 2018;319[14]:1438-40 ). Dr. Koh and Dr. Parekh reported no conflicts of interest related to the editorial.


 

FROM JAMA


However, those gains are offset by rising death rates due to drug-use disorders, chronic kidney disease, cirrhosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, hypertension, and self-harm.

In 1990, opioid use disorder was ranked 52nd in years of life lost in the United States.
Opioid-use disorders have become increasingly prevalent, moving from the 11th leading cause of disability-adjusted life years in 1990 to the 7th in 2016, a 74.5% change, according to investigators.

The three most important risk factors in the United States are high body mass index, smoking, and high fasting plasma glucose, the analysis showed. Of those risk factors, only smoking is decreasing, authors noted.

Many risk factors contributing to disparities in burden among states are amenable to medical treatment that emphasizes supportive behavioral and lifestyle changes, according to the authors.

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