Diabetes is among the key health problems and one of the most widespread chronic illness in Alameda County that affects a conservable number of individuals. According to Alameda County Public Health Department (2014), about 6.4 adults in the county were diagnosed with the disease in 2014.
Although, the disease is reported across all populations, various populations are at a higher risk in regard to the illness. In regard to this, American-Indians, African-Americans, Asians and Hispanics are among the key populations at risk of having the disease mainly due to genetic predisposition. In addition, individuals older than forty five years are at higher risk of the disease since age is among the main risk factors associated with the disease.
With regard to prevalence, statistics indicate that about 36.1% of American-Indians, 11% of African-Americans, 7.4% of Asians, 6.4% of Hispanic and 4.3% of whites in the county are diabetic. Moreover, about 44,505 incidences of hospitalizations that were associated with diabetes were recorded between 2009 and 2011 in the county (ACPHD, 2014). Furthermore, about 3.4% of the death recorded within the county annually are associated with diabetes.
The key environmental risk factors associated with the disease include; exposure to various chemicals or chemical pollution that usually increases an individual’s resistance to insulin, consumption of unhealthy foods, stress and lack of physical exercises due to various hindrances such as lack of adequate recreational facilities in the county.
On the other hand, the main social economic factors that increase an individual’s risk of developing the disease include; low income whereby this affects an individual’s ability to afford healthy diets. In regard to this, the disease is highly prevalent in the low income areas since most of the individuals consume unhealthy diets, a key contributor for the disease. Additionally, low level of income usually affects an individual’s accessibility to health care services such as screening for the disease whereby this results to poor outcomes especially among the low income individuals with the disease. More importantly, a significant number of individuals in the county carry out most of their daily activities using machines leading to poor levels of physical activities thereby increasing their chances of having the illness.
References
Alameda County Public Health Department. (2014). ALAMEDA COUNTY HEALTH DATA PROFILE, 2014. Retrieved from http://www.acphd.org/media/353060/acphd_cha.pdf
