Surprising stats
UTHealth study: Some bright spots, but Houstonians not as healthy as rest ofTexas
A new comprehensive health study shows that Houston is ahead of the curve when it comes to battling teenage obesity (although weight issues are still prominent), smokes less than the national average and is exceeding the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's goals for 2020 in breastfeeding immediately after birth.
Yet we're in poorer health than other people around the state, and a lot of us are without health insurance.
Dr. Stephen Linder's team at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston gathered health information about 5,116 Houston-area adult residents and 1,368 kids for the most comprehensive Houston health survey ever released.
More than one third of adults under 65 are uninsured, and in the same vein, 48 percent of residents said they had difficulty paying for food and/or rent or mortgage over the past year — a spooky stat for a city that supposedly sailed through the recession.
Some of the more surprising statistics:
Adults in Houston are in generally poorer health than the state average — 30 percent have high blood pressure and 32 percent are obese, both above the state average, as are our rates of diabetes, asthma and cardiovascular disease.
Seven percent of Houston residents have experienced "serious psychological distress," a statistic that affects women twice as often as men, especially when it comes to recognizing the need for help but choosing not to seek it. Linder says this may have something to do with economic factors, but the purpose of the study — to make the results available to the pubic as soon as possible — means full analysis has yet to be completed. This figure is twice the national average.
More than one third of adults under 65 are uninsured, and in the same vein, 48 percent of residents said they had difficulty paying for food and/or rent or mortgage over the past year — a spooky stat for a city that supposedly sailed through the recession.
Due to its neighborhood-based focus, Linder, the principal investigator and professor of at the School of Public Health, says that the message to take from the findings is less about individual health than about community health.
"We support collective action for dealing with unmet needs," Linder tells CultureMap.
When asked what immediate action Houstonians might take to better the situation, Linder says, "There are subgroups that are always going to be doing really well. The message to them is to keep up the good work and worry about your neighbors."
Neighbors to worry over include those living in the Northline/Eastex area, the East End and Gulfton — which is among the hardest hit of the 28 areas studied.
Subpopulations that are in particularly poor health include African American Houstonians, who are smoking at a much higher rate than the national average (although Houstonians as a whole are smoking less); the Hispanic population, of which 46 percent are uninsured (as compared to the national average of 34 percent) — 56 percent if undocumented immigrants are included; and the Vietnamese, who have the highest proportion of people self-indentifying as being in fair or poor health and are among the least proactive about screenings.
The study examines disparities across demographics but also across areas, put to graphic sense on the website with a map that allows the public to map out their area and see exactly which indicators most affect their living area.
The 2010 study is the most comprehensive study ever preformed to evaluate Houstonian's community health; Linder says he's now raising money for the 2013 study and his team hopes to complete a similar study every two years to track changes.
It's a baseline for health care reform, says Linder, and the findings' success will be a function of people and organizations using the data. Visit the UTHealth Facebook page for periodic updates about the areas studied and the indicators that most affect them. You can read complete results of the study in PDF form here.
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