Strengths:

• High rate of high school graduation
• Low percentage of children in poverty
• Low rate of uninsured population
• Few poor mental and physical health days per month

 

Challenges:

• High prevalence of binge drinking
• Limited availability of primary care physicians

 

Highlights:

• Over 800,000 adults in Iowa are obese, a quarter million more individuals than 10 years ago.
• While smoking has decreased from 23.2 percent to 16.1 percent of adults in the past ten years, almost half a million people still smoke in Iowa.
• In the past ten years, diabetes increased from 6.1 percent to 7.5 percent of the adult population. Now 227,000 Iowa adults have diabetes.
• In the past year, the percentage of children in poverty decreased from 14.7 percent to 12.5 percent of persons under age 18.
• Iowa ranks lower for determinants than for outcomes, indicating that overall healthiness may decline over time.

 

Disparities:

• In Iowa, smoking is more prevalent among non-Hispanic blacks at 31.6 percent than non-Hispanic whites at 17.0 percent. Obesity varies less dramatically by race with 33.0 percent of non-Hispanic blacks who are obese compared to 29.5 percent of Hispanics and 28.1 percent of non-Hispanic whites.

 

State Health Department Web Site: http://www.idph.state.ia.us/