Following some off-the-cuff comments from Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, stories about the population of Americans living under the poverty limit as well as those living in more extreme measures of poverty have become more frequent in the past few weeks. Living in poverty has important implications for personal and societal well being.
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Category: Health
A report out of Rutgers University details the prevalence of Americans for whom their financial stability has been greatly affected by the 2007 – 2009 Recession. The information available from the Project on Societal Distress further details how the recession has impacted multiple areas of well-being of the American family beyond income.
A study by Galea et al. published in the August edition of the American Journal of Public Health concludes that the estimated number of deaths attributable to social factors in the United States is comparable to the number attributed to pathophysiological and behavioral causes.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has published Early Release of Estimates From the National Health Interview Survey, January-March 2011.
According to the most recent KIDS COUNT Data Book by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, child well-being has stagnated since 2000, after improvements in the 1990s.
The Children’s Defense Fund has released The State of America’s Children 2011, a comprehensive look at child well-being in the United States with a focus on racial and ethnic differences
The CDC conducts the Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health across the U.S. (REACH U.S.) Risk Factor Survey annually in minority communities. The survey focuses on black, Hispanic, Asian (including Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander), and American Indian populations and is conducted in 28 communities located in 17 states.
Based on estimated county-level life expectancy data, researchers found that the U.S. ranked 37th in the world for life expectancy in 2007.
The Virginia Commonwealth University Center on Human Needs, together with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, have made available the County Health Calculator, an online simulation tool that shows how many lives would be saved if a county, state or the nation had the health benefits that exist in areas with higher levels of college education or income.
The University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation have published County Health Rankings for nearly every county in the U.S. The rankings measure health based upon multiple factors, from graduation rates to obesity.