Survey pinpoints Iowa’s health challenges

CEDAR RAPIDS - Iowa is facing an uphill battle when it comes to the number of Iowans who are obese, smoke and binge drink.

That's according to a new Iowa Department of Public Health report released Thursday.

The 2013 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System annual report is Iowa-specific and surveys a random sampling of adults on self-reported health behaviors through monthly telephone interviews.

Survey respondents are asked about their nutrition, physical activity, tobacco use, hypertension, blood cholesterol, alcohol use, preventive health care and other risk factors.

'It takes the pulse of Iowan's health,” explained Don Shepherd, Iowa Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System coordinator.

Key finding of the report include:

' The percent of respondents considered to be over their healthy weight - overweight or obese - increased from that reported in 2012.

' Significantly fewer Iowans had engaged in some sort of physical activity for exercise during the past month in 2013 than in 2012.

' The percent of current smokers increased from that reported in 2012.

' There are only four states with a higher prevalence of reported binge drinking. Those states are mostly in the Midwest.

obesity and income

The report found that 35.7 percent of adult Iowans were overweight, and another 31.3 percent were obese - meaning 67 percent of Iowans were counted as overweight or obese.

These numbers were based on Body Mass Index (BMI), which is a measure of body fat calculated with height and weight. An adult is considered overweight if his or her BMI is 25 or greater and obese if the BMI is greater than 30.

This prevalence is greater than in 2012 when 34.3 percent of adult Iowans were overweight and 30.4 percent were obese.

'This keeps going up,” Shepherd said. 'It's happening across the whole country.

'But it's also slowing sown across the country, and it's not slowing down here.”

A demographic breakdown of the data shows that income plays a large role when it comes to a person's weight, with the number of obese Iowans rising when income is lower.

Iowa's figure of 31.3 percent obese in 2013 was well above the U.S. median of 29.4 percent.

And as the number of Iowans who are overweight or obese has risen, the report found that the amount of physical exercise Iowans engage in has gone down significantly.

In 2013, about 71.5 percent of respondents said they took part in some form of physical activity for exercise - down from 76.9 percent in 2012.

More young adults exercise than older adults, the report also found.

And the percentage of respondents who exercise increases with education and household income - only 55 percent of those with less than a high school education exercised in the 2013 survey, while 84 percent of those with a college degree said they did.

Smoking and drinking

Despite the Iowa Department of Public Health's anti-smoking campaigns, which include cessation programs and a youth prevention program, Shepherd said the report found that more Iowans smoked in 2013 than in 2012. About 19.5 percent of Iowans reported being a current smoker, up from 18.1 percent in 2012.

A current smoker is defined as smoking at least 100 cigarettes in a lifetime, smoking every day or some days during the past 30 days.

More males smoke than females - 22.5 percent compared to 16.6 percent.

And smoking generally declined with increasing age, education and income. Respondents with household incomes less than $15,000 a year turned up as the highest proportion of current smokers, 33.9 percent, compared with 15.1 percent of those who had incomes between $50,000 to $75,000 a year.

In more troubling news, Shepherd said the number of heavy drinkers was up in 2013.

About 57 percent of Iowans reported that they had at least one drink of alcohol in the past 30 days in 2013. On the days when they drank, 36.7 percent said they had an average of one drink, while 13.1 percent reported consuming five or more drinks per day.

The state defines a chronic heavy drinking as someone who consumes more than two drinks per day for men and one drink a day for women - which means that 6.5 percent of all respondents were heavy drinkers.

Gender and race greatly factored into the number of heavy drinkers.

The report found that, on average, 8.4 percent of men were heavy drinkers compared with 4.7 percent of women, with age breakdowns revealing that there were more heavy drinkers among men than women at almost all ages.

Likewise, more white respondents reported being a heavy drinker (6.8 percent) than those who were Hispanic (5.8 percent) or black (0.7 percent).

Shepherd said the data collected is incorporated into national studies and used to apply for grants. However, the challenges presented in the report does not necessarily mean the IDPH will begin any additional campaigns to correct them.

'It's hard to tell, it can go either way,” he said.

The health department has administered the monthly survey since 1988 but changed the methodology in 2011 to include cellphones as well as landlines.