Jackson Free Press

Any paper addressing health in Mississippi would be remiss to not give the most recent statistics on how we're doing. Two recently published studies, one from the non-profit United Health Foundation and the other from the American Heart Association, provided the following stats and our ranks in comparison to all other states for 2006:

Overall rank: 49, up one point from 2005

Smoking]: 23.6 percent, rank 42

Motor vehicle deaths: 2.4 per 100 million miles, rank 50

Obesity: 30.9 percent, rank 48 (racial disparities exist nationwide for women, but not men: black women, 41.5 percent; Hispanic women, 26.2 percent; white women, 19.3 percent)

High School graduation: 62.7 percent of incoming ninth graders, rank 47

Violent crime: 278 offenses per 100,000 people, rank 15

Occupational fatalities: 14.1 per 100,000 workers, rank 47

Infectious diseases: 22.5 cases per 100,000 people, rank 36

Children in poverty: 30.7 percent of all people under 18, rank 50

Lack of health insurance: 17.4 percent of the population, rank 36

Per capital public health spending: $197, rank 11

Immunization coverage: 83.6 percent of children 19 to 35 months, rank 14

Prenatal care: 81.3 percent of pregnant women, rank 8 (although racial disparities in Ms. are huge, with American Indians at 71 percent and whites at 91 percent)

Infant mortality: 10.1 percent per 1,000 live births, rank 49

Cardiovascular disease deaths: 405.9 per 100,000 people, rank 50

Coronary heart disease deaths: 176.1 per 100,000 people, rank 40

High blood pressure: 33.3 percent of people over 18, rank 50

Stroke deaths: 63.6 per 100,000 people, rank 43

Overall Cardiovascular deaths: 408.1 per 100,000 people, rank 49

Cancer deaths: 211.4 per 100,000 people, rank 38

Premature deaths: 10,889 years lost per 100,000 people, rank 49

As a region, the South (Ala., Ark., Del., D.C., Fla., Ga., Ky., La., Md., Miss., N.C., S.C., Tenn., Texas., Va., and W.Va.) had roughly twice as many heart and cardiac surgeries as any other region in the U.S., at 2,731,000.

As a country, 2004 infant mortalities in the U.S. were about the same as Cuba and Crotia, with six deaths per 1,000 live births, as compared to Iceland and Singapore with two deaths. For the same year, our life expectancy was roughly on par with the Republic of Korea and Kuwait: 71 for women and 67 for men. The Japanese can expect to live longest: 78 for woman and 72 for men.