In Honor of National Public Health Week! Let’s celebrate our accomplishments and talk about what it will take to become the healthiest nation in one generation!
The accomplishments of the public health community over the last two decades are significant. To become the healthiest nation in one generation: experts need to support the integration of public health and primary care; policy decision-makers need to understand and support funding for both a strong public health workforce and prevention programs proven to advance health, both national and local policy decision-makers need to expand the consideration of health implications in all the policies they create, and the general public needs to make healthy choices for themselves and demand that everyone has an equal opportunity to make those same choices.
Facts & Stats
Some of the greatest public health achievements of the 20th century, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (and we agree) include:
• Healthier mothers and babies – Infant and maternal mortality rates have decreased in the United States. Environmental interventions, improvements in nutrition, advances in clinical medicine, improvements in access to health care, improvements in surveillance and monitoring of disease, increases in education levels and improvements in standards of living contributed to this remarkable decline.
• Immunizations – Today, U.S. vaccination coverage is at record high levels. National efforts to promote vaccine use among all children have helped eradicate smallpox and dramatically decrease the number of cases of polio, measles and other diseases in the U.S.
• Motor vehicle safety – We’ve seen a huge reduction in the rate of death attributable to motor vehicle crashes in the United States, which represents the successful public health response to a great technologic advancement, the motorization of America. The response has spanned government, public health and driver and passenger behavior.
• Family planning – Increased contraception use, public health education and other factors mean that, today, Americans face fewer unintended pregnancies and are far more likely to achieve desired birth spacing and family size.
• Tobacco as a health hazard – During 1964-1992, approximately 1.6 million deaths caused by smoking were prevented thanks to substantial public health efforts.
• Decline in deaths from heart attack and stroke – Still the country’s top killers, the public health community has helped achieve remarkable declines in deaths from both diseases: since 1950, deaths from cardiovascular disease have declined 60 percent, and stroke rates have declined 70 percent.
For more visit http://www.cdc.gov/about/history/tengpha.htm
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