Health News
- U.s. Smoking Rate Drops From 16.8% To 15.2% In One Year; Ky. Ranks No. 2 In Most Recent State Data; County Data Are Available
"The national smoking rate among adults has reached an all-time low since anti-smoking efforts began decades ago, according to a report this week from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention," reports Lauren P. Duncan of The...
- County Health Rankings Look Familiar, But Show That Some Counties Overcame Bad Factors To Have Encouraging Outcomes
The 2015 County Health Rankings for Kentucky, compiled by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute in collaboration with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, have been released. For the fourth year in a row, Oldham County ranked highest...
- Smoking Increases Risk Of Getting Lung Cancer By Up To 20%, But Add Other Carcinogens And It Can Go Up As Much As 300%
If you smoke, your risk of getting lung cancer is as much as 20 times greater than if you don't. But if you smoke and are exposed to other carcinogens such as radon, asbestos, arsenic or chromium, your risk could be 300 times greater, according to...
- Key Tools Against Smoking In Last 50 Years Have Been Taxes, Laws, Regulations, Medicine, Education And Cessation Programs
Eight million lives have been saved as a result of the U.S. surgeon general's efforts for tobacco control says an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Surgeon General Luther Terry jump-started America's efforts to battle...
- Heavy Smoking Less Common Than 40 Years Ago
The percentage of people who smoked 20 or more cigarettes a day decreased significantly from 1965 to 2007 in the United States, according to a study in the March 16 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. There was also a decline in...
Health News
Smoking persists or even increases in poor, rural, working-class counties; New York Times cites Clay County as an example
Clay County has a dubious distinction. It has the highest rate of smoking for any U.S. county with a population under 15,000. Researchers at the University of Washington pointed that out, and The New York Times focused on it in reporting the larger finding: Some poor, rural and working-class counties have increasingly high rates of smoking, while the smoking rates in wealthy counties continue to decline.
In Clay County, the smoking rate was 36.7 percent in 2012. ?It?s just what we do here,? Ed Smith Jr., 51, told the Times, which reports, "Several of his friends have died of lung cancer, and he has tried to quit, but so far has not succeeded." (Institute for Health and Metrics map shows adult smoking rates by county; Clay and Knox counties are the red area in southeastern Kentucky. The interactive map shows how rates have changed since 1996, overall and among men and women. To view it, click here.)
The smoking rate among adults has decreased 27 percent since 1997, but only 15 percent among poor people, and haven't changed at all for adult smokers living in deep poverty in the South and Midwest, the study found. "The findings are particularly stark for women," Sabrina Tavernise and Robert Gebeloff write. "About half of all high-income counties showed significant declines in the smoking rate for women, but only 4 percent of poor counties did." Education also plays a role. "Americans with a high-school education or less make up 40 percent of the population, but they account for 55 percent of the nation?s 42 million smokers."
Clay County is one of the nation's poorest, and only 7 percent of its people have a college degree. The county seat, Manchester, passed an indoor smoking ban in 2012, and Manchester Memorial Hospital "runs a smoking-cessation program that offers free nicotine patches and gum in an effort to reach low-income smokers," the Times reports. ?Smoking cessation is our biggest uphill battle,? Jeremy Hacker, the hospital?s community outreach coordinator, told the newspaper. Smoking is no longer a normal activity in urban places, he said, but in Clay, ?It?s not viewed as a problem.? (Read more)
 |
| Ed Smith Jr. (NYT photo by Tim Harris) |
Clay County is one of the nation's poorest, and only 7 percent of its people have a college degree. The county seat, Manchester, passed an indoor smoking ban in 2012, and Manchester Memorial Hospital "runs a smoking-cessation program that offers free nicotine patches and gum in an effort to reach low-income smokers," the Times reports. ?Smoking cessation is our biggest uphill battle,? Jeremy Hacker, the hospital?s community outreach coordinator, told the newspaper. Smoking is no longer a normal activity in urban places, he said, but in Clay, ?It?s not viewed as a problem.? (Read more)
- U.s. Smoking Rate Drops From 16.8% To 15.2% In One Year; Ky. Ranks No. 2 In Most Recent State Data; County Data Are Available
"The national smoking rate among adults has reached an all-time low since anti-smoking efforts began decades ago, according to a report this week from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention," reports Lauren P. Duncan of The...
- County Health Rankings Look Familiar, But Show That Some Counties Overcame Bad Factors To Have Encouraging Outcomes
The 2015 County Health Rankings for Kentucky, compiled by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute in collaboration with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, have been released. For the fourth year in a row, Oldham County ranked highest...
- Smoking Increases Risk Of Getting Lung Cancer By Up To 20%, But Add Other Carcinogens And It Can Go Up As Much As 300%
If you smoke, your risk of getting lung cancer is as much as 20 times greater than if you don't. But if you smoke and are exposed to other carcinogens such as radon, asbestos, arsenic or chromium, your risk could be 300 times greater, according to...
- Key Tools Against Smoking In Last 50 Years Have Been Taxes, Laws, Regulations, Medicine, Education And Cessation Programs
Eight million lives have been saved as a result of the U.S. surgeon general's efforts for tobacco control says an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Surgeon General Luther Terry jump-started America's efforts to battle...
- Heavy Smoking Less Common Than 40 Years Ago
The percentage of people who smoked 20 or more cigarettes a day decreased significantly from 1965 to 2007 in the United States, according to a study in the March 16 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. There was also a decline in...