Ohio Health Policy News

HPIO has released a new policy brief that explores the impact of parental criminal justice involvement on the health, safety and well-being of children and families in Ohio.

The brief is the latest in a series of HPIO publications on the connections between criminal justice and health.

The new brief explores the generational cycle of justice involvement, illustrated above.

“Incarceration of a household member is an adverse childhood experience (ACE) that can cause serious and long-lasting health and economic harms across generations and for individuals, families and communities,” the brief states. “These harms include increased likelihood of children becoming involved in the justice system.”

At the same time, according to the brief, “Children need to grow up in safe communities, free from crime and violence, requiring a balance between community safety, family stability and child well-being in Ohio’s criminal justice policies.”

The brief includes a collection of evidence-informed policy options that leaders across the state can act on to prevent and mitigate the impacts of parental justice involvement on children and families.

Funding for HPIO’s Criminal Justice and Health project was provided by the Ohio State Bar Foundation and HPIO’s core funders.

U.S. life expectancy rose last year — by more than a year — but still isn’t close to what it was before the COVID-19 pandemic (Source: “US life expectancy rose last year, but it remains below its pre-pandemic level,” Associated Press via Cleveland Plain Dealer, Nov. 29).

The 2022 rise in life expectancy was mainly due to the waning pandemic, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But even with the large increase, U.S. life expectancy is only back to 77 years, 6 months — about what it was two decades ago.

The snapshot statistic is considered one of the most important measures of the health of the U.S. population. The 2022 calculations released Wednesday are provisional and could change a little as the math is finalized.

For decades, U.S. life expectancy rose a little nearly every year. But about a decade ago, the trend flattened and even declined some years — a stall blamed largely on overdose deaths and suicides.

To learn more about trends in deaths among working-age Ohioans, which has driven the state’s decreased life expectancy, see HPIO’s recent data snapshot.

The rate of suicides involving guns in the United States has reached the highest level since officials began tracking it more than 50 years ago, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Source: “U.S. Rate of Suicide by Firearm Reaches Record Level,” New York Times, Nov. 30).

According to a new CDC report, the rate increased by more than 10% in 2022 compared with 2019, and in some racial and ethnic groups, the rise was significantly steeper, especially among Native Americans. Overall, about 27,000 of 50,000 suicides were carried out by gun in 2022.

Federal researchers involved in the analysis suggested that the coronavirus pandemic might have exacerbated many of the known risk factors for suicide generally, which include social isolation, strained relationships, and drug and alcohol disorders. At the same time, outside experts noted, the increased rates also correlated with another trend seen during the acute phase of the pandemic: rising gun sales.

The rate of suicide by any method has increased by one third in the past two decades, according to federal data. More than half of those now involve firearms, the report said.

The rate of suicides involving guns in the United States has reached the highest level since officials began tracking it more than 50 years ago, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Source: “U.S. Rate of Suicide by Firearm Reaches Record Level,” New York Times, Nov. 30).

According to a new CDC report, the rate increased by more than 10% in 2022 compared with 2019, and in some racial and ethnic groups, the rise was significantly steeper, especially among Native Americans. Overall, about 27,000 of 50,000 suicides were carried out by gun in 2022.

Federal researchers involved in the analysis suggested that the coronavirus pandemic might have exacerbated many of the known risk factors for suicide generally, which include social isolation, strained relationships, and drug and alcohol disorders. At the same time, outside experts noted, the increased rates also correlated with another trend seen during the acute phase of the pandemic: rising gun sales.

The rate of suicide by any method has increased by one third in the past two decades, according to federal data. More than half of those now involve firearms, the report said.

In just a few days, Ohio State will face that team up north in The Game.

Once again this year, OSU and Michigan are neck-and-neck in the College Football Playoff rankings, with the Buckeyes holding a slight edge.

On health value, though, Michigan ranks better than Ohio. HPIO’s 2023 Health Value Dashboard found that Ohioans spend more on healthcare and have worse health outcomes than Michiganders. 

So how can the Buckeye state improve?

Just like in football, teamwork, focus and hard work pay off. We all need to work together to improve health by building on Ohio’s many assets. Ohio can:

• Support and strengthen the workforce, leveraging recent success in attracting employers in high-growth industries
• Foster mental well-being by supporting resilience and recovery across the state
• Reinvigorate approaches to improving outcomes and controlling unnecessary healthcare spending

If leaders in the public and private sector work together, Ohio can be a national leader in health value, just like the Buckeyes are on the football field.

New analysis from the Health Policy Institute of Ohio found that the number of firearm-involved deaths among Ohio children increased sharply in recent years, as illustrated above.
 
According to data from the Ohio Department of Health’s Ohio Public Health Data Warehouse, there were 104 deaths involving a firearm of children ages 0-17 in Ohio in 2022, or a rate of 4.05 deaths per 100,000 children. That is more than double the rate of 2007, when the death rate was 1.76 per 100,000 Ohio children.
 
What Works for Health, an online tool developed by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute to identify evidence-informed health policies, includes a number of potential options that local and state leaders can consider to increase firearm safety for children.

The Centers for Disease Control said the rate of kindergarteners exempted from school vaccinations has hit the highest level ever at a national average of 3% in the 2022-2023 school year – up from 2.6% (Source: “CDC reports increase in kindergarten vaccine exemptions, Ohio is above the national average,” WOSU, Nov. 10).
 
Ohio’s exemption rate is just above the national average at 3.8%, which is up 0.8% from the 2021-2022 school year.
 
Ohio law allows students to be exempted from vaccines for medical reasons or “reasons of conscious,” which include religious reasons. The CDC estimates about 89% of Ohio's nearly 134,900 kindergarteners are fully vaccinated for diphtheria, tetanus, polio and measles, mumps and rubella. Some others are partially vaccinated or in a vaccination grace period. The national average for full vaccination is about 93% – slightly lower than before the COVID-19 pandemic, when the national vaccination rate was at 95% in the 2019-2020 school year.

The American Heart Association announced this week plans to release a new clinical tool that removes race as a factor in predicting who will have heart attacks or strokes (Source: “Race Cannot Be Used to Predict Heart Disease, Scientists Say,” New York Times, Nov. 14).
 
Doctors have long relied on a few key patient characteristics to assess risk of a heart attack or stroke, using a calculus that considers blood pressure, cholesterol, smoking and diabetes status, as well as demographics: age, sex and race. Now, the American Heart Association is taking race out of the equation.
 
The overhaul of the widely used cardiac-risk algorithm is an acknowledgment that, unlike sex or age, race identification in and of itself is not a biological risk factor. The scientists who modified the algorithm decided from the start that race itself did not belong in clinical tools used to guide medical decision-making, even though race might serve as a proxy for certain social circumstances, genetic predispositions or environmental exposures that raise the risk of cardiovascular disease.
 
The revision comes amid rising concern about health equity and racial bias within the U.S. health care system and is part of a broader trend toward removing race from a variety of clinical algorithms. “We should not be using race to inform whether someone gets a treatment or doesn’t get a treatment,” said Dr. Sadiya Khan, a preventive cardiologist at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, who chaired the statement writing committee for the American Heart Association.

The rate of child and teen cancer deaths in the U.S. fell 24% from 2001 to 2021, according to a report released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Source: “Child and teen cancer deaths fell 24% in the last 2 decades, CDC says,” NBC, Nov. 16).
 
Death rates among children of all ages dropped between 2001 and 2011. But after 2011, only children 9 and younger saw "significant" declines.
 
All races saw cancer death rates fall 15-17% within the first decade, but only death rates among white children continued to drop significantly after 2011. The death rate dropped only slightly for Hispanic youths — and increased for Black youths — between 2011 and 2021. By 2021, the report noted, the rate for white youths was 19-20% lower than for their Black and Hispanic peers.
 
Pediatric oncologists say the overall decline could be explained by advancements in treatments for certain cancers.

Last month, HPIO released a new Data Snapshot that highlights the prevalence in Ohio of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) — potentially traumatic events that occur during childhood.

Exposure to ACEs —is a pervasive problem affecting many children in Ohio and across the country. ACEs exposure contributes to poor health and well-being throughout life, including disrupted neurodevelopment, social and emotional challenges, disease, disability and premature death.

The analysis found that the risk for developing poor health outcomes associated with ACEs increases in proportion to the number of ACEs to which a person is exposed. For example, as illustrated above, Ohioans who have been exposed to two or more ACES are almost twice as likely to report being a current smoker than people who did not experience any ACEs.

Starting in 2020, HPIO released a series of policy briefs on the health and economic impacts of ACEs and elevated 12 evidence-informed, cost-effective strategies (program, policies and practices) that can prevent ACEs.