What is the reason being for Obesity Rise Trumps Smoking Decline?”
Dec. 2, 2009 — Over the next decade the health benefits achieved because fewer Americans are smoking will be more than overshadowed by the negative health effects of the unchecked rise in obesity, new research suggests. As a population, Americans are smoking less but weigh more than they have in many years. According to the CDC, about 34% of U.S. adults, or 72 million people, are obese today, compared to about 15% in 1980. But half as many adults smoke. About 1 in 5 American adults smoke today, compared to 2 in 5 in the 1970s. Although these competing trends have been obvious, the net impact on health has been less so. In an effort to forecast the effect of the rise in obesity and decline in smoking on health at the population level over the next decade, researchers from Harvard University and the University of Michigan examined data from national health surveys conducted from the early 1970s through 2006. Their study appears in the Dec. 3 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Walk up to Union Pacific’s headquarters in downtown Omaha, Neb., and the gaggle of smokers typically clustered outside office buildings these days is nowhere to be found. The company has banned smoking anywhere on its main property — inside or out. Gradually though, where employees smoke will become less of an issue, because in Omaha and seven other states, Union Pacific won’t hire smokers. “We put so much time into helping employees to lower all these different health risks, it doesn’t make sense to bring them in as smokers and then have to put all that effort into getting them to quit [smoking],” says Marcy Zauha, director of health and safety, who helped to put the hiring policy in place last summer. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, employer health-insurance premiums rose almost 14% between the spring of 2002 and 2003, marking the third consecutive year of double-digit growth. So companies big and small are analyzing their insurance claims to see which preventable, lifest
