[[Health Week 1]]
1. A health issue that I believe is not publicized enough is the recent findings of many types of cancers increasing in prevalence for people under the age of 50. A recent study found that the incidence of 14 types of cancer increased for people under the age of 50. While difference in screening guidelines and detection can lead to some of these effects, they don't account for everything and factors such as a rise in obesity and change in diets is also likely a cause. I believe that this issue should be covered more because cancer very deadly and we need to raise awareness and work towards cures as much as we can. This issue largely affects physical wellness, since cancer causes damage to your body, but it can also cause damages to the other dimensions as an effect of a deterioration of physical wellness, or the knowledge that a cure doesn't always work.
2. A health issue that I think is receiving too much attention in the media right now is the current administration's claims about the causes of autism. The secretary of Health and Human Services recently claimed that mothers taking acetaminophen while pregnant leads to an increased risk of their children developing autism once they are born. This has become a large news story, partially because there little to no studies supporting it and many that refute this claim. Even if some of the media coverage is pointing the lack of evidence that was presented to back up this claim, there is still media coverage that is not doing this. Because there was no real evidence presented to support this claim I don't believe that it should be a news story so that people aren't misled into believing that studies have shown that there is a link between painkillers during pregnancy and autism. (https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/trump-autism-tylenol-medical-experts/)
3. I was assigned to look at Guatemala. Currently, the life expectancy of Guatemala is 71.9 for females and 65.6 for males. The average life expectancy in Guatemala is about 3 years less than the rest of the world, and 8 years less than that of America. The top causes of death in Guatemala are COVID-19, Ischaemic heart disease and Diabetes mellitus. The population in Guatemala is also growing very rapidly, and currently only 5.9% of the population is over the age of 65. Something that I found interesting was that while the life expectancy around the world fell after the COVID-19 pandemic, Guatemala's fell more sharply than the world average. Especially with COVID being the largest cause of death by a large margin, I wonder if Guatemala experienced the pandemic worse than many other countries in the world. COVID-19 being the largest cause of death didn't surprise me since it was such a deadly disease and killed so many people, but I was surprised how much the population skews to the younger side. I was also surprised that diabetes was one of the largest causes of death in Guatemala, since it doesn't seem to be one here in America.