Better Health For 'All of Us'!
CBOs can bring healthy food into focus for better health and save up to $820 billion in health care costs annually.
U.S. health care spending increased 9.7 percent to reach $4.1 trillion in 2020, which is much faster than the 4.3 percent increase experienced in 2019. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) declined by 2.2 percent in 2020, leading to a sharp rise in the share of the overall economy related to health care spending — from 17.6 percent in 2019 to 19.7 percent in 2020. U.S. per capita expenditure on health $10,985 is in the world in 2019.
According to a Pew Research Center report, despite such high healthcare expenditure, more Americans today view public health as declining than improving. These hard facts suggest that spending money would not get the USA more health; instead, we have to look at the root cause affecting people's health. The human body's primary function is to produce energy. It takes food, water, and air, processes it through its metabolism, produces all the energy, and meets the needs of other functions while keeping the body healthy in all the normal individuals. U.S. consumers spent $1.79 Trillion on food in 2019. We need whole grains, Tubers, vegetables, fruits, dairy foods, poultry, fish, legumes, and nuts. Consumption of all these different varieties of food in the right proportion can ensure good health. However, EAT — the Lancet commission reports that the USA consumes four items in excels ( meat 638 %, starch 171%, eggs 268%, poultry 234%) and others not sufficiently.
Prof. Christopher J.L. Murray, Director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, concluded after a large-scale global study that diet, our asset for good health, has become a liability and is the top cause of morbidity and mortality in the present world.
Consuming imbalanced diet and excess calories with low nutrients is the main problem that appears to be the primary source of poor health. In particular ultra-processed food is the main reason excess calories lead to weight and gain and a host of health issues associated with being overweight.
According to a new study, Harvard researchers showed that unhealthy diets account for almost 20% of U.S. health care costs or $820 billion from heart disease, stroke, and diabetes.
Eating food not prepared at home or prepared outside and industrially requires processing to various degrees and adding preservatives and storage — all of which can affect health. Consumption of food away from home is more than double that of the food prepared at home.
Even the lowest income group families spend $4,000 on food. A person with three to four chronic diseases has a burden of $25,000 annually on health care expenses, while individuals without any chronic diseases has only $6,000 annually.
However, a recent study by Utah State University found that following the MyPlate Dietary Guidelines would cost a family of four between $1,000-$1,200 a month ($12,000.00-$14,400 annually)
So to turn back food as an asset and make it help the country gain the health and people save money is the need of the hour!
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) mission is to seek fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and apply that knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability. It spends several billions of dollars annually (2021 budget just under $43 billion). Research funded by NIH generates generated more than 247,000 papers on food and health. The last-mile delivery of knowledge gained in research labs and fields by thousands of scientists and physicians does not reach the needy. Lack of knowledge about a healthy diet for good health hurts middle- and lower-income groups — 60% of the population of approximately 200 million people.
Dr. Mark Hyman, a physician practicing functional medicine, has demonstrated that food can restore people's health. He went to the patients' homes and empowered them with the knowledge needed to take charge of their health by selecting the right food items, cooking at home, and eating well.
Obesity increases the risk of several debilitating and deadly diseases, including diabetes, heart disease, and some cancers. It is rising rapidly in the USA steadily and steeply more in men than women. Healthy eating is a key to good health and maintaining a healthy weight. It's important not only what and how much we eat but also, it seems, how we eat. We can educate its population on what, how much, and how to eat food obesity can be controlled on a large scale.
To empower communities and use the knowledge for better health, we need robust nationwide, non-governmental, locally well-grounded organizations with constant community contact to spread the knowledge and translate it into results — improvement in the health of the communities. Who else can they be beside the community-based organization (CBO) with a good track record?
CBOs can assure the program's success in all five areas — Education, Trust, Access, Cost-effectiveness, and Sustainability.
They can educate people in their communities. They are from the same neighborhood and have worked to help the community. They are the trusted ones. The knowledge and advice given by the trusted ones are accepted far better than through any other agency.
The CBOs have excellent access to the people in the community rather than a city, state, or federal agency. Evaluation of several programs run by the community-based organization shows that they are the most cost-effective platform for delivery services and education of communities. Entrusting the education about healthy food to measuring the results in a community can be done seamlessly by the local CBOs. They ensure the program's sustainability until we reach our goal — better health for all of us!
One million dollars in funding for a 1,000 CBO in all states, a total of One Billion dollars, can reduce obesity significantly, giving several billions of dollars in reduced public health care costs!
