Based on research findings, the leading disease and apparently the cause of deaths in United States health care system has been established to be heart disease (cardiovascular disease), heart disease is responsible for about 28.5 % of all the deaths in the United States (Meyer, 2013). These results concur with the prevalence of heart disease in New York.
Apart from cardiovascular disease, another prevalent and apparently the second cause of deaths in New York State is cancer (Barker, 2013). This disease has several risk factors associated with it that includes an individual’s lifestyle, genetic makeup, and the environmental risk factors. To begin with, one major risk factor in cancer is age, older people are more vulnerable to cancer as compared to young people, and this is mainly because cancer takes time to develop. Lifestyle risk factors that are closely associated with one’s habits include smoking, unsafe sex, excessive consumption of alcohol and a prolonged daily exposure to the sun. Additionally, families with consistent incidents of cancer in the past pose a huge risk to individuals basically because cancer can be transferred to the upcoming generations through mutations. Last but not least, health conditions such as ulcerative colitis and an environment that contains chemicals incredibly increase the risk of acquiring cancer.
Arguably, a third of cancer cases have been established to be preventable (Barker, 2013). Congruent with this, the state of New York has employed a number of strategies to combat with the prevalence of this disease in to its populace. The strategies that have been put forth to combat cancer in New York state include, an increased access to quality cancer treatment, increased awareness and access to cancer screenings, improved quality of lives for cancer survivors, fostering and sustaining an adequate healthy working environment to reduce risk factors associated with cancer, improved integration of palliative care during cancer treatment among many other strategies.
This analysis has been beneficial in that, I have deduced some of the most crucial and evidently appropriate ways of reducing prevalence of cancer apparent from the strategies employed by the New York. It is also apparent that cancer and heart disease are the major causes of deaths in New York and America at large. These diseases prompts government and state intervention through findings and formulation of strategies subsequent to its severe impacts to the populace.
References
Barker, J. (2013). Year Book of Pulmonary Diseases 2013. London: Elsevier Health Sciences.
Meyer, H. (2013). Taking Aim At America's Number One Killer-- One Key Heart Disease
Risk Factor At A Time. Health Affairs, 31(5), 895-898. doi:10.1377/hlthaff.2012.0388
