While tobacco remains the largest cause of death in the United States, obesity and an overall lack of physical fitness is rapidly catching up. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, emphasizes the need for this fast-rising concern to become a priority for the country's healthcare system: "We just recalculated the actual causes of death in the U.S. and we did see that obesity moved up very close to tobacco, and is almost the number one health threat."
During a presentation in which she had been expected to talk extensively about the growing threat of bioterrorism and such emerging infectious diseases as SARS, Gerberdings comments instead focused more on traditional diseases, which she said could be better managed with some common sense prevention.
To underscore the point, she referred to her recent patient log from one days work in a hospital emergency room: multiple people treated for tobacco-related illnesses, trauma resulting from failure to wear a seat belt or helmet, cancer and AIDS. "None of my patients were admitted for bioterrorism," she said, stressing that even in today's world of heightened terror alert, the threat of terrorism should not be exaggerated relative to the other traditional health threats.
Gerberdings suggestions regarding ways to respond to the concern of obesity included health officials taking a community-based approach to the problem--for example, offering people more residential roads on which to walk. She also said individuals should not underestimate the significant improvements that can be achieved through small lifestyle changesfor example, she said, eliminating just 100 calories per day, or burning that much more through exercise, will prevent additional weight gain for most people and can be accomplished in such simple ways as taking the stairs instead of the elevator.