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:
“Our young people are diseased with the theological problems of original sin, origin of evil, predestination, and the like. These never presented a practical difficulty to any man,—never darkened across any man’s road, who did not go out of his way to seek them. These are the soul’s mumps, and measles, and whooping- coughs, and those who have not caught them cannot describe their health or prescribe a cure. A simple mind will not know these enemies.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“At last I feel the equal of my parents. Knowing you are going to have a child is like extending yourself in the world, setting up a tent and saying “Here I am, I am important.” Now that I’m going to have a child it’s like the balance is even. My hand is as rich as theirs, maybe for the first time. I am no longer just a child.”
—Anonymous Father. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, ch. 5 (1978)
“To safeguard one’s health at the cost of too strict a diet is a tiresome illness indeed.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)