Better Education Leads To Better Health, Report Says

The more educated you are, the less likely you are to smoke, be disabled or contract diabetes and the more likely you are to exercise, according to the latest National Health Survey (2009) by the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, which was published on Tuesday.

The survey was based on interviews at 9,000 households comprising 29,000 people who constituted a representative sample of the population. The data will be used, among other things, to report on health trends to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which Israel officially joined last year.

The survey showed that the average per capita number of visits to doctors was 6.2 in 2009; the lower the educational level, the more visits to physicians.

Those who studied least visited 19 times a year compared to 12 by people who studied 16 years or more.

Other data showed that between 2000 and 2010, people aged 65 and over constituted 10 percent of the population, but in 2025, they are expected to comprise 13% of the population, as many Israelis who arrived here as children after the Holocaust and the declaration of the state reach that age.

In 2009, the elderly represented 25% of those making visits to doctors compared to 21% in 2000, even though their relative share in the population hardly increased during the decade.

Seventeen percent of the adult population said they had been diagnosed with at least one chronic disease, such as hypertension, heart disease, asthma, cancer or diabetes; this was an increase from 15% in 2000. Almost 70% of those over 65 reporting have been diagnosed with at least one chronic disease.

Among adults aged 25 and above, 6% (5% of the men and 7% of the women) reported suffering from chronic disability; over 65, 18% of the men and 27% of the women said they had such a disability. The more education one had received, the lower the likelihood of disability.

About half of those over 65 received a flu shot, with 53% of Arabs and 51% of Jews vaccinated in 2009. Sixtyseven percent of women aged 50 to 69 underwent a mammogram to detect breast cancer during the previous two years, compared to only 53% nine years before.
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Via http://www.jpost.com
Photo by James Sarmiento (old account)