Friday, December 12, 2008

United States will not meet its 12% goal for smoking prevalence by 2010


Reuters HealthDay reported on November 13, 2008 on a report in the CDC Journal, Morbity and Mortality Report, which says that the United States will not meet its Healthy People 2010 goal of 12% prevalence rate for smoking in the United States. Here is a snippet from the Reuters HealthDay article:

It's unlikely the United States will meet its Healthy People 2010 objective of reducing the adult smoking rate to 12 percent or less, say experts at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

That failure will mean continued high levels of smoking-related health problems, deaths and lost productivity will still plague the nation, according to a number of CDC studies released Thursday.

Smoking is a leading cause of preventable death and disease in the United States, but comprehensive tobacco control programs could prevent millions of premature deaths and save the nation billions.

In one study, researchers analyzed data from the 2007 National Health Interview Survey. They found that 19.8 percent (43.4 million) of American adults were current cigarette smokers, a level somewhat lower than in 2006 (20.8 percent), 2005 (20.9 percent), and 2004 (20.9 percent).


I believe that only Utah has met the 12% goal. New York State depending on the report seems to be at about 16%.

At GCASA we continue to work on smoking cessation, and the prevention of untaking. We are moving in the right direction as far as we can detect from our data but it will take a while longer to eliminate this nasty addiction from our area.

1 comment:

collin said...

Great info. Thanks for sharing.

Denver Therapist