Issue 167 Item 13 U.S. Worried by Native Americans’ High Diabetes Rate

The number of preventable injury-related deaths remains disproportionately high for youth on reservations, due to diabetes reaching near epidemic levels among Native American adults, reported by the federal government last Thursday. Dr. Craig Vanderwagen, chief medical officer for the Indian Health Service, said the erosion of native culture and family support systems might be helping to fuel these worrying health trends in American Indian and Alaska Native communities.

“This (fragmentation) is reflected in behaviors that really influence people’s health, both very immediately in the case of youth who are involved in accidents and suicide, and in the longer haul for adults who have eating behaviors that affect their health adversely,” Vanderwagen said.

A total of 6.6 million people classified themselves in some way as American Indians or Alaska Natives in the 2000 U.S. Census.
Although diabetes has risen throughout the United States during the past decade, the new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that natives still suffered the disease at a rate more than double other adults.

The CDC, which devoted the bulk of its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report on Thursday to health disparities among American natives, also noted that poverty tended to be higher in these communities.
An estimated 15.3 percent of American native adults were diagnosed with the disease in 2002, according to the CDC. Approximately one third of natives 55 years and older had the disease last year.
Diabetes, which is one of the leading causes of disability and death in the nation, can lead to blindness, kidney failure, amputation of lower limbs and heart disease.
A separate study published on Thursday revealed that there were 3,314 deaths due to injuries and violence among natives 19 years old or younger who lived in areas governed by the Indian Health Service between 1989 and 1998.

That was about twice the rate for the same age group in the U.S. population, according to the CDC. Car accidents, suicide and murder were the leading causes of death among young natives. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, July 31, 2003.


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FACT: Americans now get 31 percent of their calories from junk food and alcoholic beverages, according to a 2000 study by the American Society for Clinical Nutrition. In 1945, Americans drank more than four times as much milk as soda, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture; in 1998, we drank more than twice as much soda as milk. Every year, the typical American now consumes 149 pounds of caloric sweeteners, 54 gallons of soda and 200 pounds of mostly refined grains.