Living healthy

The economy and education have more to do with overall health than you might think. 

Dr. Donald Williamson, M.D., the state health officer for the Alabama Department of Public Health, presented this information to the Greater Shelby County Chamber of Commerce at its Sept. 24 luncheon and gave its members some ideas for how to make Alabama a healthier state. 

He offered statistics concerning infant mortality and personal lifestyle as major points, and he explained the link between poverty, education and health. 

Infant mortality 

The infant mortality rate in Alabama is currently at 8.6 per 1,000 live births, which is better than it has been in the past and is far ahead of the national average. 

Williamson said it is typical for the birth rate to decline when the economy goes bad, and it especially declines in teenage births. This also decreases the infant mortality rate because the infant mortality rate in teens is 50 percent higher than in other births. 

The amount of time given between births is also a factor. 

“We know that if you space babies out, they do better than when you have them too close together,” Williamson said. “Two years seems to be the magic time.” 

The infant mortality rate is 11.4 percent in births less than two years apart and 6.9 percent in births two to four years apart, almost a 50 percent difference. It is almost equal to the risk added to those women who smoke while pregnant. 

“Smoking in pregnancy is probably the single highest-risk thing you can do for your child,” Williamson said. “It increases the infant mortality rate from 7.9 to 13 percent.”  

Lifestyle 

About 8,600 people die from tobacco use in Alabama and about 10,000 Alabamians start smoking every year. 

Williamson said this problem could be avoided by increasing the smoke-free laws in Alabama, which has some of the most lenient smoke-free laws. 

Obesity is another area where Alabama is behind the national average. Only Mississippi and West Virginia have obesity rates higher than Alabama. A projection of the obesity rate states that about 60 percent of Alabamians will be obese by 2030. 

“Obesity is a much harder thing to deal with,” Williamson said. “[With obesity] we are where we were with tobacco in the ’60s. Clearly, fundamentally it is individual responsibility, but the truth is if you look at the social models, most of us need some sort of social support to get us to do what we ought to do.”

Williamson said that incentives such as building more sidewalks and possibly decreasing the sales tax on nutritional foods could be a way to help decrease the obesity rate. He said money really affects the foods people buy, and healthy foods are often more expensive than other foods. 

This all leads to the unifying concept for health in Alabama — the economy. Williamson said that the better educated a person is, the more likely they are to better support themselves and be healthier individuals. This is also related to how well the economy is in Alabama.   

“I don’t have the answer for what this means, but what it gets at is you can’t fix the health of Alabama until you fix the economy of Alabama,” Williamson said.