The obesity epidemic that is hammering the nation may be creating the first generation in which children may die before their parents, a leading doctor said Wednesday at UTEP.
Dr. Elena Rios, president of the National Hispanic Medical Association, said obe sity, which is hitting minority groups particularly hard, stems from changes in lifestyle, a food pyramid that pushed the wrong foods and the nation's late focus on preventive health care.
Obesity has been linked to younger people developing Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and some types of cancers.
"Without changes, this will be the first generation where kids die before their parents," Rios said. "Workers in their 30s and 40s with diabetes and obesity are going to have horrible chronic diseases, and without health-care reform, we're just not going to have a functioning economy.
"We're going to see people in their 40s on dialysis, with amputations, high blood pres sure, arthritis. Just about every major chronic disease is connected to diabetes."
Rios said the most effective prevention can start in schools that teach children how to live healthful life styles.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a top health-care foundation, decided a couple of years ago to spend $500 million on child obesity research. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also started to focus on obesity as a serious public health problem.
Nationwide, about 36.2 percent of children aged 6 to 11 are overweight or
obese, and 18.8 percent are obese, according to an article in the September issue of Migration Information Source, "Moving to the Land of Milk and Cookies: Obesity Among the Children of Immigrants."
They obesity epidemic has a number of causes, Rios said. They include a greater reliance on fast foods; a lack of physical activity; an outdated food pyramid that emphasized pastas, breads and potatoes; government incentives for farmers to grow those foods; chemicals to grow those foods faster; and a lack of information on how to prevent unhealthful weight gain.
Rios is in El Paso this week for an unprecedented gathering of three national health organizations' officers and the American Medical Association's panel on health disparities today at the University of Texas at El Paso.
On Wednesday, Rios was joined at a news conference by Dr. James Rohack, president of the American Medical Association, and Dr. Willarda Edwards, president of the National Medical Association.
All three agreed it was important to provide as many people as possible with good, affordable health care.
Rohack gave an example of why the U.S. government needs to overhaul the health-care system.
"If we don't do anything, a woman right now who doesn't have health insurance in the United States and becomes pregnant, and tries to buy health insurance, that pregnancy is not covered because it is called a 'pre-existing health condition,' " Rohack said. "I'm sorry -- that's not good care."
The leaders of the nation's top medical organizations said several things combine to put health insurance out of reach for many.
They said doctors order unnecessary or duplicate tests for simple conditions -- tests that drive up the cost of care.
However, doctors may do this to cover themselves in the event of future malpractice suits. Such litigation also contributes to the rising costs of insurance, for both doctors and patients.
Edwards said changes in health care should involve as many health professionals as possible, and not rely just on doctors. This is important considering the nationwide shortage of an estimated 125,000 doctors the government expects by 2025.
"We've talked about creating a medical home, where the patients then have somewhere where they can have someone that will be monitoring the care they are receiving and the access to care," Edwards said.
"And, that's not just the physician, that's also the nursing profession and other allied health professionals who may be assisting," he said.
She said the health-care reform discussions included the medical home concept, as well as the need to approach health care in different ways.
As part of their visit in El Paso, the doctors took part in the AMA's "Doctors Back to School" program at Bel Air High School to encourage students to pursue careers in health care.
The three doctors also will participate in the AMA's panel on health disparities today at UTEP. Also today, the university will feature Sidney McNairy, a biochemist and leading health researcher, at its grand-opening ceremony for the Bioscience Research Building.
Diana Washington Valdez may be reached at dvaldez@elpasotimes.com; 546-6140. To see more of the El Paso Times, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.elpasotimes.com. Copyright (c) 2009, El Paso Times, Texas Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Copyright (C) 2009, El Paso Times, Texas