Introduction
Traditionally, most of the medical related interventions to women have had an inclination towards reproductive health. Although data across most American states shows similarities in health stressors facing women, recognition of health indicators of specific states would facilitate a more focused approach to these health problems. Although statistics show longer life expectancies for women, the fact remains that this specific group are prone to geriatric conditions including but not limited to cardiovascular diseases, osteoporosis and mental disorders. Despite Illinois State doing much to meet the needs of women healthcare, the national women’s law center website indicate that the State is still far from achieving the goal of equitable health for all the women. Illinois State lags behind in implementation of federal health laws including the Affordable Care Act (ACA). This paper seeks to discuss the demographics of women in the state of Illinois, the health indicators of the state and common conditions affecting females in this locality.
The general demographics of the population of women in the state of Illinois
Amongst the states in America, Illinois ranks at position 20 in terms of healthcare insurance. Only 16% of the women have access to healthcare through an insurance cover. Race among other factors have contributed to the disparity in access to healthcare, given a substantive 33.7% of Hispanic women lack insurance cover, while only 11.6% of the Caucasian women do not have coverage. Generally, most of the counties in Illinois meet the benchmark target for healthcare preventive services but some continue to lag behind in some aspects (Seguin et al., 2014). The services that the state scores highly include the target for the breast cancer screening and screening for cancer of the large bowel. However, it is important to note that the state has not hit the standard minimum in terms of cervical cancer screening and lipid profiling ("The Status of Women’s Health in Illinois | Health Care Report Card", 2017) .
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Chronic preventable diseases are the leading causes of death in Illinois. These diseases, especially stroke, breast cancer and lung cancer continue to cause an increasing morbidity and mortality. Obesity among women stands at an all-time high percentage of 27, which calls for urgent public health mitigation measures.
In general, Illinois has met 35 out of the 68 goals, as the Report Card indicates. This includes among others, the coverage by Medicaid for expectant mothers. There is the need to increase translation services especially for the hospital attendees from immigrant communities, who do not understand or speak English. Despite the high eligibility for the public insurance program (Medicaid), there is the need for policy that offers coverage for pregnancy related drugs. This necessitates infiltration by private insurance companies (Hess et al., 2015). Despite these challenges, the Affordable Care Act has helped a great deal in addressing some of the problems. For instance, the law has seen to it that the premiums paid by individuals are independent of the gander or the preexisting health condition for the small-scale business people. Additionally, the law has enabled coverage for children regardless of their prior illnesses ("The Status of Women’s Health in Illinois | Health Care Report Card", 2017) .
The status indicators about the health status of women in Illinois
By 2010, only 16% of women had not registered to health insurance. This means that the vast majority of women in the state have access to healthcare, especially that which pertains to reproductive health. Despite this coverage, about 12.1% of the women lived in the medically underserved areas. Affected by this were majorly migrant communities of Hispanic and Asian origin living in the sub-urban areas in Illinois ( "Illinois | Health Care Report Card", 2017 ).
Maternal and child health care was readily accessible to over 85% of women, with 86.2 of women living in Illinois accessing first prenatal care during pregnancy. The state allows for abortion without the need to wait for a compulsory waiting period. However, 30% of females in the state lacked a specialized abortion provider within their locality ( "Illinois | Health Care Report Card", 2017 ).
Worst health issues facing women in the state and why might this be the case.
Cardiovascular disease is the third leading cause of death in the United States with an estimated annual mortality of about 250,000 people. Illinois ranks at number 29 among other American states, with a statistic of 118.1 deaths for every 100,000 people. The annual expenditure on the treatment of these diseases is about 500 billion U.S dollars in the United States and a large amount of this allocation goes to the treatment programs rather than the preventive strategies. This creates a huge burden to the government and families. The 2010 data on mortality from strokes 45.6 deaths for every 100,000 women, and this relates to a high morbidity of the complications of cardiovascular disease ( "Illinois | Health Care Report Card", 2017 ).
High blood pressure and hypercholesterolemia are the major contributors to the development of the disease. Approximately 1 in 3 individuals in the United States is hypertensive. Comparing this data with the data on Illinois, 27.7% of the female population is hypertensive. The rates are even high for the black population in which obesity affects six in every 10 individuals ( Robbins et al., 2014 ). About 8.1 million Americans currently suffer from cardiovascular disease, which proves a very high morbidity. Close to 90% of the population takes an exceedingly high amount of salt in their diet, which directly translates to increased prevalence of hypertensive disease. Prevention of the cardiovascular disease by educating populations at risk is therefore paramount ( "Illinois | Health Care Report Card", 2017 ).
Other chronic diseases affecting women in Illinois are diabetes and HIV/ AIDS, which account for 8.6 and 5.8 deaths per 100,000 people respectively ( Esping‐Andersen & Billari, 2015). The overall prevalence of cardiovascular and chronic diseases is attributable to the lifestyle of the people living in Illinois. Cardiovascular diseases are preventable through lifestyle modification. Risk factors for the development of the disease include high fat diet, high salt diet, obesity, smoking, and physical complacency. Measures to prevent the diseases are through lifestyle modifications such as low fat diet, restriction of salt intake, physical exercises and smoking cessation
Conclusion
In summation, Illinois ranks at number 20 among other states according to the Report Card, having satisfactorily met 35 out of 68 parameters. Only 16% of the women have access to healthcare through an insurance cover. Race among other factors have contributed to the disparity in access to healthcare, given a substantive 33.7% of Hispanic women lack insurance cover, while only 11.6% of the Caucasian women do not have coverage. This has however improved since the establishment of the Affordable Care Act. Cardiovascular conditions, diabetes, lung cancer and carcinoma of the breast are the leading causes of mortality in the state. Part of this is attributable to the poor coverage of cancer screening programs and preventive measures that target the obese population.
References
Illinois | Health Care Report Card . (2017). Hrc.nwlc.org . Retrieved 9 February 2017, from http://hrc.nwlc.org/states/illinois .
The Status of Women’s Health in Illinois | Health Care Report Card . (2017). Hrc.nwlc.org . Retrieved 10 February 2017, from http://hrc.nwlc.org/status-women%E2%80%99s-health-illinois
Hess, C., Milli, J., Hayes, J., & Hegewisch, A. (2015). The status of women in the states 2015. Washington, DC: Institute for Women’s Policy Research. Retrieved June , 15 , 2015.
Esping‐Andersen, G., & Billari, F. C. (2015). Re‐theorizing Family Demographics. Population and Development Review , 41 (1), 1-31.
Seguin, R., Buchner, D. M., Liu, J., Allison, M., Manini, T., Wang, C. Y., ... & Stefanick, M. L. (2014). Sedentary behavior and mortality in older women: the Women’s Health Initiative. American journal of preventive medicine , 46 (2), 122-135
Robbins, C. L., Zapata, L. B., Farr, S. L., Kroelinger, C. D., Morrow, B., Ahluwalia, I. & Williams, L. (2014). Core state preconception health indicators—pregnancy risk assessment monitoring system and behavioral risk factor surveillance system, 2009. MMWR Surveill Summ , 63 (3), 1-62.
