Mortality and Morbidity: The US Smoking and Diet Conundrum

The third reading reflection on chapter 10 and the Fenelon article are all based on mortality and morbidity and how those two terms are affecting society today. One of the main factors of mortality and morbidity in America, are smoking and diet. “Smoking is a chief contributor to morbidity and the leading cause of mortality” (Berkman 365). Obesity is a cause of mortality that is driven by diet and physical activity throughout the life-course (Berkman 365). For the Fenelon article, it focuses on the geographical difference in health throughout America, as well as smoking that is increasing in Southern states in the U.S and other states that are starting to decrease. Growing up as a child in elementary school and to middle school, teachers would take all of the students to seminars from either a doctor or counselor to talk about how bad smoking is to an individual’s health and telling students to not smoke. Now as a college student, there is no more seminars of smoking but studying how smoking is affecting individuals’ health and society. What caught my eye in the article is that according to Berkman (366), adult smoking was 50% in the 1950’s and has decreased into 19% in 2011, which is a huge drop compared to sixty years ago. Another thing that caught my attention from the

According to research, obesity rates are high for Blacks and Hispanics compared to Whites (Berkman 367). Also what stood out to me the most in the chapter was how research found in low-income neighborhoods with high concentrations of African Americans have more fast food outlets (Berkman 369). With this study I find it to be true, because in Oxon Hill, PG County, Maryland, have fast food restaurants, although the area is improving slowly, there are not enough healthy places to eat for individuals living in low-income