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...of community grants to prevent several chronic health conditions, such as those caused by smoking and poor diet. And in June, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN), with bipartisan support, introduced bill--one of many similar measures introduced this session--that would authorize new grants for obesity prevention.
These efforts are examples of a growing awareness in the United States about how lifestyle changes can positively impact public health. The antiobesity message, while simmering for many years, has recently come to prominence, helped in part by a December 2001 "Call to Action" by former Surgeon General David Satcher, as well as by the efforts of his successor, Richard H. Carmona. It parallels, in many ways, the more established antismoking message, which has been pushed by U.S. surgeons general since the 1960s and which has contributed to dramatic declines in smoking rates.
Two Epidemics
Such campaigns are pursued because smoking and obesity are two of the leading causes of preventable mortality and morbidity in the United States. Both are risk factors for a large number of critical health problems, such as heart disease, stroke and cancer.
According to a 2001 surgeon general report on women and smoking, three million U.S. women have died prematurely from smoking-related disease since 1980, and lung cancer is now the leading cause of female cancer death (surpassing breast cancer). Similarly, Satcher's 20011 report on obesity associated that condition with diabetes, heart disease, stroke, hypertension, cancer and a number of other problems. In an April 2002 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), researchers estimated that smoking cost $158 billion per year in the late 1990s, including medical care costs and productivity losses. Similar numbers were cited by the surgeon general for obesity--$117 billion in 2000.
The impact of neither epidemic is likely to fade anytime soon. Incidence of smoking has declined significantly among American adults, but the decline has slowed considerably, and rates are still dangerously high. According to the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), the incidence of smoking has dropped from 42% of adults in 1965, to 25% in 1990 and 23% in 2000. Smoking among high school students peaked at 36% in 1997, but 29% still...
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