Health
Eight Southern states have obesity rates over 30% of the population, the highest in the country: Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and West Virginia. Rates for hypertension and diabetes for these states are also the highest in the nation. A study reported that six Southern states have the worse incidence of sleep disturbances in the nation, attributing the disturbances to high rates of obesity and smoking. Life expectancy is lower and death rates higher in the South than in the other regions of the country for all racial groups
The South also has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the country, with states like Arkansas, Mississippi, and Texas having rates exceeding 60 per 1,000 teens.
The 2011 American State Litter Scorecard reports that hundreds each year are killed by vehicle collisions with unremoved debris along public roadways. Approximately half of the nation's total deaths by these accidents occur within the combined states of Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Florida, Georgia and North Carolina. The Scorecard also noted the South has the most number of WORST states having unclean public spaces and poorest citizen environmental health practices.
Read more about this topic: Southern United States
Famous quotes containing the word health:
“Youth no less becomes
The light and careless livery that it wears
Than settled age his sables and his weeds,
Importing health and graveness.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“It is not stressful circumstances, as such, that do harm to children. Rather, it is the quality of their interpersonal relationships and their transactions with the wider social and material environment that lead to behavioral, emotional, and physical health problems. If stress matters, it is in terms of how it influences the relationships that are important to the child.”
—Felton Earls (20th century)
“The years when we are parenting teenagers are the high point, the crest when everything seems to be in bright colors and in ten-foot letters.”
—Jean Jacobs Speizer. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Collective, ch. 4 (1978)