Strengths:

• Few poor mental and physical health days per month
• Low rate of uninsured population
• Ready access to early prenatal care

 

Challenges:

• Limited availability of primary care physicians
• Low per capita public health funding
• High infant mortality rate

 

Highlights:

• In the past five years, diabetes increased from 6.9 percent to 8.4 percent of the adult population. Now, 239,000 Kansas adults have diabetes.
• In the past year, the percentage of children in poverty increased from 18.0 percent to 23.1 percent of persons under age 18.
• In the past year, the rate of preventable hospitalizations decreased from 75.3 to 70.5 discharges per 1,000 Medicare enrollees.
• Over 800,000 adults in Kansas are obese, 295,000 more individuals than 10 years ago.
• The rate of deaths from cardiovascular disease has declined in the last ten years from 324.3 to 265.2 deaths per 100,000 population.
• While smoking has decreased from 21.0 percent to 17.0 percent of adults in the past ten years, almost a half million people still smoke in Kansas.

 

Disparities:

• In Kansas, obesity is more prevalent among non-Hispanic blacks at 41.8 percent than non-Hispanic whites at 28.4 percent. Diabetes also varies by race and ethnicity in the state; 12.2 percent of non-Hispanic blacks have diabetes compared to 8.1 percent of non-Hispanic whites.

 

State Health Department Web Site: www.kdheks.gov