Health and Public Health Issues: Project Info Public Health Current Event

Public health is one of the top priorities for any country and its economic budgeting since healthy people contribute to economic strengthening more effectively. The higher number of ill people, the more costs government would have to incur for their treatment and prevention. This paper aims to explore a public health topic presented in the media these days and relevant to Healthy People 2030 objectives, behaviors, or conditions.

Description of Health Condition

From Healthy People 2030 objectives, the health condition selected for this paper is diabetes. Over 30 million people are impacted by diabetes in the United States, making it the seventh leading cause of death (Healthy People 2030, n.a.). The number of diagnosed people is up to 28.7 million people, adults majorly (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2022a).

Principally, diabetes is the body condition in which food is broken down in sugar form and then released into the human bodys blood (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2021b). When the sugar level is high within the bloodstream, it directs the pancreas to produce more insulin, depicting high blood sugar levels. When the body suffers from such a condition, there is insufficient insulin, and the cell response is low. The blood sugars remain and stop further processing, making the kidneys suffer.

According to Healthy People 2030, the objectives for reducing the number of people suffering from this public health issue indicate that two objectives have improved results. Two objectives showed little or no detectable change, while nine showed only baseline-met objectives (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2022). Another two showed developmental progress in meeting the set objectives in the particular area.

There are different types of diabetes, and most of them affect adults of age 45 years. Type 2 diabetes mostly develops in this age group, leading to one in 10 Americans and roughly 90-95% of them suffering from the illness. However, more teens, children, and young adults have recently been falling victim to diabetes, which is of extra concern to the public health department (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2021c).

Characteristics

Different types of diabetes have different health conditions and epidemiology. For instance, type 1 diabetes is insulin-dependent, where deficiency in the production of insulin is experienced by the body (World Health Organization, 2021). Individuals suffering from type 1 need a daily dose of insulin to meet the bodys requirements and ensure stability. In type 2 diabetes, which is non-insulin-dependent, the bodys unproductive use of insulin causes the condition (World Health Organization, 2021). It is mainly prompted by excessive body weight and low physical inactivity, prevalent in 95% of adults.

Effects on the body are serious and could be severe in the form of two-thirds of the adults at risk of experiencing heart attacks, which is a fatal outcome (World Health Organization, 2021). Heart strokes could also be conducive to the same condition as reduced blood flow creates distress for the heart. Other effects include damage to foot nerves and difficulties in neuropathy, risk of foot ulcers, and serious infections leading to the removal of the affected limb or body part (World Health Organization, 2021). Further, when diabetes enters into serious stages, loss of eyesight could be another problem and long-term damage to the retina and its blood vessels. Blindness prevails in more than one million people with diabetes (World Health Organization, 2021). Kidney failure cannot be ignored as it is one of the prominent body failures due to diabetes.

Treatment of diabetes includes a long-term change in diet and daily engagement in physical exertion with low intakes of sugar and glucose (World Health Organization, 2021). Physical activity of at least 30-minutes every day is suggested with moderate intensity. These are the predominant factors that could cause continuing damage to blood vessels. Similarly, specialists also recommend tobacco cessation to prevent the complexities of diabetes mortality and cardiovascular damage.

Medical interventions for the treatment of diabetes include daily insulin for type 1 diabetes patients, while type 2 diabetic patients could be prescribed medications and a certain amount of insulin (World Health Organization, 2021). Keeping a close monitor of blood pressure level is proposed. Taking care of feet is highly significant when diabetes hits the body, including foot hygiene, wearing comfortable shoes, patient self-care and self-management of foot conditions, and going to the physicians for regular check-ups of feet (World Health Organization, 2021).

Brief Summary of the Article

The selected article discusses the prevalence of the disease worldwide, which prompts the use of insulin in more people in 2021 compared to the previous year (LaMotte, 2021). Despite extensive education and preventive interventions for diabetic people worldwide, 537 million people still live with diabetes. More than 7 million adults have died globally due to diabetes,...

…a person-centered intervention along with self-management and self-adherence to reduce harmful effects physically and psychologically. Also, community-based interventions for minorities and low-income groups are excellent since healthcare experts work in inter-professional teams with a common mission and goals for sharing knowledge, fostering adherence, and increasing efficiency with efficacy (Sorensen et al., 2020).

Data from Healthy People 2030 showed that some of the objectives had been met, but some are still only meeting the targets while others are below their target achievements.

Along with lifestyle and diet changes, relevant education programs, and medications for mitigating diabetes risk, the psychological impacts of the disease need to be addressed vigorously. Anxiety and depression and a patients age, ethnicity, race, and sex should be studied and applied to certain underserved segments of the population since healthcare access might aggravate their condition (Seng et al., 2021). There is a clinical significance for the population segmentation, so the intervention strategies for alleviating psychological impacts should be applied systematically.

Some specific objectives need to be completed with more force, such as disseminating health education for diabetes and increasing the proportion of adults using insulin, and monitoring their daily blood sugar (Healthy People 2030, n.a.).

Interest in Topic

With the excessive economic burden diabetes poses on the government, which, according to American Diabetes Association (ADA), was $327.2 billion in 2017, the topic is of interest. The diagnosed people with diabetes account for 81% of the entire population, calculated at $13,240 cost per person. The predicted risk of the disease is far greater than what is understood by the professionals. Moreover, the selected article has complicated the functioning of the disease and reactions to the pandemic, which has still not ended, leading the experts to think of other creative ways to address the challenge. Cost-effective ways of reducing the impact of disease are to be researched with technological infusion so that significant reductions in the number of people using insulin and other noteworthy objectives of Healthy People 2030 could be met more speedily.

Also, with the pandemic still not ready to leave, children and ethnic groups should be focused more on gaining prevention on a large scale. To make clear associations of how Covid-19 would impact the reactions to diabetes, children and ethnic minorities should be studied extensively, as a particular percentage of children is also investigated to be victims of type 1 diabetes. Hence, the topic is…