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Introduction
Health
Care Costs Continue to Rise
Did You
Know?
Experience
Is Driving Health Care Costs!
Metabolic
Syndrome – Syndrome X
Costliest
Health Conditions
Obesity Drives Health Care Costs
The Health
Risk Continuum
Wellness
Programs Make the Difference
Obesity is
Linked to higher rates of chronic conditions than Smoking, Drinking
or Poverty
Why Go Smoke Free?
Giving Your Health Benefits a Checkup
Understand Health Industry Trends
Communication is Important to Employee
Wellness
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Obesity is Linked to higher rates
of chronic conditions than Smoking, Drinking or Poverty
Provided by
the Health Initiative
Project
An Employee Health
Program with Accountability
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A study examined data from Healthcare for
Communities, a national household telephone survey fielded
in 1998 asking 10,000 participants to self-report on 17
chronic health conditions, height, weight, poverty, smoking
status, problem drinking, health-related quality of life,
and a variety of demographic factors.
The study revealed that obesity is linked
to very high rates of chronic illnesses – higher than living
in poverty and much higher than smoking or drinking. When
compared to normal-weight individuals of the same age and
sex having similar social demographics, obese people suffer
from an increase in chronic conditions of about 67%. In
contrast, normal weight smokers suffered from an increase of
25% chronic conditions and normal weight heavy drinkers had
only 12% increase in chronic conditions.
In terms of chronic conditions, being
obese is like aging from 30 to 50. Poverty is also a
significant health threat. The increase in chronic
conditions for people living in poverty is about 58%.
Since obesity has such a strong impact on
chronic health conditions, weight reduction is an urgent
public health priority.
RAND Health Research Highlights,
summarizing RAND research reported in the following
publications: Sturm, R. The Effects of Obesity, Smoking and
Problem Drinking on Chronic Medical Problems and Health Care
Costs. Health Affairs. 2002;21(2):245-253.
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