Three Things Thursday highlights three things I am paying attention to as an epidemiologist each week. This week I want to talk about graduation celebrations. It is that time of year — seniors are graduating, celebrating, and making major decisions about what is next. It’s a time of excitement and fear; relief and unknowns; closure and great expectations.
On a personal note — if you celebrating a graduating senior, please do NOT ask them what they want to be/do when they grow up. Please do NOT do it. I could write a book on why this is a bad question to ask — but the bottom line is most graduates don’t know. So don’t put pressure on them to answer. More importantly, the world is changing so quickly that new jobs and opportunities will be created and new technologies will lead to new and exciting opportunities. And as these graduates enter the real world they’ll be exposed to so many new opportunities. I didn’t hear the word EPIDEMIOLOGY until I was a junior in college. I didn’t know that TV studios would hire someone like me to talk about health and medicine until 2020. And when I graduated from college, writing a Substack wasn’t a thing.
To quote Dr. Bill Foege, our graduates —
“Cannot imagine the opportunities that will be presented. (They) enter a world of infinite possibilities…”
Instead, ask graduates questions like — who would you like to help in the future? what type of problem would you like to solve? what topics are you interested in learning more about? what type of people would you enjoy working with?
Yesterday the students from the first-grade classes at Sandy Hook Elementary School graduated from high school — twenty of their classmates and six teachers/administrators were absent. They were all killed in the deadliest K-12 shooting that took place in December 2012. This post is also a solemn reminder of the epidemic of gun violence in our country. Those 26 victims of the Sandy Hook massacre should have all been at graduation yesterday.
This post about graduation — and the three public health challenges graduates will face as they enter the real world — is inspired by the graduates of Newtown High School, especially those who are stepping forward publicly and talking about the trauma, survivor’s guilt, and need for change. When asked about the epidemic of gun violence and school shootings since the Sandy Hook Massacre, one student said on Good Morning America yesterday —
“They don’t need us to say ‘sorry for your loss.’ They just want change. Like, this should never have happened to us. It should never have happened to them. I think people in power, or people who have the power to make change, should do it instead of the 17 - or 18-year-olds trying to do their work for them.”
The public health challenges the class of 2024 will face in the future include (but are NOT limited to) the epidemic of gun violence, the reality that we are living in a time where my generation (Gen X) has more cancer than my parent's generation, and the impact climate change is having on human health.
Hoping this post helps to educate and empower you
to be healthy and create healthy communities.
Epidemic of Gun Violence
(At the cost of sounding like a broken record…) We need to recognize that gun violence is a public health emergency. And it is threatening the lives of our children, as well as their mental and emotional health.
Change is needed.
Did you know that gun violence is the leading cause of premature death in children and youth in the United States? It is. More than 100 Americans die each day from gun violence. The number of guns purchased in the US is increasing, as are deaths and injuries from guns. This is unacceptable.
Gun violence has become an epidemic.
And gun violence is a threat to public health.
The science of public health, epidemiology, can be used to conduct surveillance and research related to gun violence in the United States. With data and results from research studies, we can craft policies, programs, and interventions to do what public health does best —
PREVENTION.
“Time and time again, a public health approach to solving health threats is a proven, evidencebased approach to improving health and preventing injury… Health epidemics don’t end unless we intervene taking the best science about what does and does not work and using it. The epidemic of intentional gun violence can be reversed with a science-based approach. It happened with Ebola, it worked for automobile crashes and it can absolutely reduce gun violence.”
~Dr. Georges Benjamin, Executive Director of the American Public Health Association
We need to prevent gun violence before it happens (primary prevention). We must put an end to secondary prevention of gun violence — where teachers and students are tasked with responding to violent situations in their classrooms by locking doors, hiding under desks, and barricading themselves in safe spaces.
Secondary prevention is unacceptable when it comes to gun violence.
Primary prevention — ensuring that gunmen do not enter school buildings, ensuring semi-automatic guns cannot be purchased, ensuring that background checks and gun safety are par for the course across the country — must be our goal. Public health is declaring gun violence to be an epidemic. We want new policies and change. And we stand behind Vice President Harris, who said —
“As a nation, we must have the courage to stand up to the gun lobby and fight for sensible gun safety laws to ensure nothing like this happens again.”
We need to prevent gun violence — our children’s lives demand that we take action today.
No more thoughts & prayers. We need policy & change.
More Cancer
On Monday, a new paper was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA Network), which aimed to answer the question —
Is cancer more common today than it was in the past?
The short answer to this question is — YES. Cancer is being diagnosed more frequently now than in the past. Specifically, the authors state —
“In this cohort study of 3.8 million patients with cancer…, members of Generation X born between 1965 and 1980 have been experiencing larger per-capita increases in the incidence of leading cancers combined than any prior generation born between 1908 and 1964.”
More importantly,
“The incidence of some cancers in the US is increasing in younger age groups.”
What does this mean for the future?
“Cancer incidence in the US could remain unacceptably high for decades to come.”
Our graduates face some grim cancer statistics —
Their probability of developing an invasive cancer before their 50th birthday is high (1 in 29 for males or 1 in 17 for females).
One in eight females will develop breast cancer during their lifetimes.
About 80,000 young adults aged 20 to 39 are diagnosed with cancer (and 9,000 will die) each year in the United States.
But there is some good news — from the development of cancer vaccines to the identification of biomarkers to help us diagnose cancers early so they can be treated. And there are job opportunities in these fields. Spaces to be creative and inventive. Opportunities to communicate research findings or coordinate a clinical trial.
As we look to the future — there will be opportunities to conduct research to prevent cancer and work toward health equity (because, for example, Black/African American people have higher death rates than all other racial/ethnic groups for many cancer types — this type of inequality needs to be eliminated).
Cancer will NOT be eliminated in our lifetime, but we can work toward improving prevention, screening, diagnosis, and treatment in the future.
Climate & Health
According to the World Health Organization —
“Climate change presents a fundamental threat to human health. It affects the physical environment as well as all aspects of both natural and human systems – including social and economic conditions and the functioning of health systems. It is therefore a threat multiplier, undermining and potentially reversing decades of health progress.”
As the Earth’s temperature rises — we can expect multiple impacts on human health.
As we think about being healthy and creating healthy communities in the future, we need to address climate change. Climate change is NOT just a problem impacting the polar bears.1
Climate change is a human health issue.
And we’ve already seen the impacts… last summer there were the first locally-acquired malaria cases in the United States in decades. And reports of wildfires and air pollution warnings have been quite common. Our health is intimately tied to the air we breathe, water we drink, food we have access to, and communities where we live, learn, work, play, worship, and grow old.
Prioritizing our planetary health is how we ensure we have healthy communities.
The public health challenges facing our future generations are wicked problems.
To the class of 2024 — I invite all of you to join the public health workforce. We need you — we need artists and statisticians, videographers and clinicians, writers and educators, and so much more. We need teammates and partners, creative thinkers and determined workers.
And if joining the public health workforce is not your jam, that’s okay. But please commit to doing your part to create healthy communities — wherever you decide to call home.
Seek out preventive healthcare.
Get vaccinated.
Build strong communities.
Stay home when you are sick. |
And please — find trusted sources of health information.
Congratulations to the class of 2024!
If you have questions about a career in public health or becoming an epidemiologist, health communicator, blogger, or TV contributor — please ask. I’ll also answer questions about gun violence, cancer, and climate change.
And please share this post with your friends and family, especially those who are graduating or celebrating a senior this year.
Epi(demiology) Matters is written by Dr. Becky Dawson, PhD MPH — an epidemiologist, teacher, mom, wife, and dedicated yogi. She is a tenured professor at Allegheny College, Research Director at a community hospital, and an exclusive contributor (all things health & medicine) at Erie News Now (NBC/CBS). Her goal is to create healthy communities for all. She writes Epi Matters — first & foremost because epidemiology does matter (to all of us) and she hopes that each post will help to educate and empower readers to be healthy and create healthy communities.
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Though this picture is heartbreaking…