Findings highlight wide-ranging health impacts and alarming cost implications
by Patty Starr President and CEO, Health Action Council
Newly released claims data from more than 220,000 people reveal the latest evidence on the role obesity plays in health and health care costs, underpinning the need for supportive measures and interventions.
The new study, which analyzed Health Action Council (HAC) members with health plans administered by UnitedHealthcare, found that people with obesity cost their employers 2.3 times more than those without the condition and paid 66% more out-of-pocket ($662) per year than their peers without obesity. Notably, Millennials with obesity incurred over 8% higher per member per month (PMPM) costs than Baby Boomers without obesity who were 27 years older, due to the increased likelihood of chronic condition diagnoses.
Multifaceted health consequences
Comorbidities such as diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, and musculoskeletal issues were major cost drivers. The more comorbidities a person with obesity experienced, the higher their costs became. Obesity significantly increased the risk of various cancers, including breast, colon, rectum, and upper stomach cancers, and increased the risks for anxiety, substance use disorders, and depression.
Obesity among women of childbearing age
The report highlighted a 19-percentage-point rise in obesity rates between Gen Z women (9%) and Millennial women (28%), the largest generation in today’s workforce. This was particularly concerning due to the heightened maternal mortality risks and mental health issues associated with obesity.
The ripple effect on children
Children of parents with obesity are generally twice as likely to develop the condition themselves, but this risk tripled for children of HAC members if at least one parent had obesity. These children were also 44% more likely to experience depression, 39% more likely to have ADHD, and had higher rates of developmental disorders, asthma and diabetes.
Whole person weight management solutions
Effective strategies will require more than GLP-1s, which are unlikely to meaningfully impact obesity rates due to their high costs and low compliance rates. Consistent with the Food and Drug Administration’s label, these medications should be used in tandem with a life-style modification program for the treatment of obesity.
Strategies for employers
Following are a few steps employers can take to build a healthier workplace culture.
Understand your population. Analyze claims to determine the percentage of your workforce and dependents impacted by obesity. Identify prevalence, most impacted groups, as well as other health risks and social drivers of health.
Foster a healthy environment. Encourage a positive relationship with food, activity, and stress management by offering classes on exercise, nutrition, and mindfulness and providing non-processed foods at meetings, events, and in common areas. Encourage daily physical activity, less screen time, and quality sleep.
Offer comprehensive health solutions. Implement wellness solutions that integrate whole-person health by providing access to virtual providers such as network dietitians, digital health tools like mental health apps, and wearable technologies such as continuous glucose monitors.
About the author ~
Patty Starr is President and CEO of Health Action Council and is responsible for driving the strategic direction of the organization--build stronger, healthier communities where business can thrive.
The Illinois Health and Hospital Association, the Association of Safety Net Community Hospitals and the Illinois Critical Access Hospital Network issued a statement saying they strongly oppose HB 3512.
by Grace Friedman Medill Illinois News Bureau, Capitol News Illinois
SPRINGFIELD — Health care unions continue to rally for legislation to address understaffing they say strains hospitals and threatens both patient safety and staff well-being.
Lawmakers are considering the Hospital Worker Staff and Safety bill, which would establish mandatory nurse-to-patient staffing ratios and increase support for underfunded hospitals.
The proposed legislation, Senate Bill 21 and House Bill 3512, aims to establish minimum staffing ratios in hospitals and fund critical safety-net hospitals across the state. Advocates with health care worker unions have been holding a series of rallies at the Capitol in support of the legislation in recent weeks.
“Our hospitals are staffed unsafely,” Kawana Gant, a certified nursing assistant at UChicago Medicine Ingalls Memorial Hospital in Harvey, said at a recent Statehouse rally. “I have worked short shifts where there are 30 patients and only one CNA on the floor. How can you give quality care? It is not safe.”
Gant, who has worked at Ingalls Hospital for nearly 30 years, says she has watched many of her colleagues quit due to the mental and physical toll the short staffing has had on their bodies.
“This is an opportunity for legislators to hear us, to know that these hospitals are not safe.” Gant said.
But similar versions of the proposed legislation have been introduced at the Statehouse for recent years and have failed to gain traction. Generally backed by unions representing nurses, such as the Service Employees International Union, previous staffing ratio measures have run into opposition from hospital groups that say they’re unworkable.
The proposed legislation filed this year has yet to receive a hearing in a substantive committee, meaning it will be an uphill battle for it to move by the time the legislature adjourns at the end of the month.
Like previous versions, it would mandate that hospitals “employ and schedule sufficient staff to ensure quality patient care and safety.” In addition, hospitals would have to share annual staffing metrics with the Illinois Department of Public Health to help ensure they are at proper staffing levels.
“This bill gives you a real voice,” Rep. Kam Buckner, D-Chicago, said to rallygoers. “It gives you a way to speak up when things are unsafe for you and the people who you care for.”
However, not all lawmakers are convinced that now is the right time to implement staffing ratios.
“You can mandate the staffing ratios, but if those professionals don’t exist, what have you really done?” said Rep. Norine Hammond, R-Macomb. “We’ve been trying for years to get more people into the health care field, especially after COVID, and we’re just not there yet.”
Hammond expressed concern that enforcing strict staffing requirements without enough qualified workers in the pipeline could place unrealistic burdens on hospitals. She warned that such mandates might unintentionally strain facilities already struggling with labor shortages and lead to adverse financial consequences, especially for smaller or rural hospitals.
Hospital trade groups echo those concerns, calling the legislation unworkable, burdensome and an ineffective way to solve a problem that should be addressed by the specific needs of each hospital or care center. The Illinois Health and Hospital Association, the Association of Safety Net Community Hospitals and the Illinois Critical Access Hospital Network issued a statement saying they strongly oppose HB 3512.
They said it was introduced “as a backdoor effort pushed by organized labor to impose unworkable, government-imposed health care staffing ratios in Illinois.”
“This proposal would relegate the essential, complex and nuanced protocols established to safely and efficiently staff a hospital 24/7/365, to a series of burdensome forms and onerous paperwork that hospitals would be required to submit to the (IDPH) to establish minimum staffing standards for every hospital worker, in each hospital unit,” the groups said in the statement.
Still, according to a recent Service Employees International Union survey of Chicago area hospital workers, 70% of respondents reported understaffing, and over 25% reported unsafe or unmanageable workloads. Additionally, in the same survey, 47% of the respondents stated an intent to leave their jobs soon.
To help enforce safety standards, the legislation introduces “assignment despite objection forms” that give hospital workers the opportunity to document and report any assignments that they believe are unsafe. Hospitals are then required to provide this information to IDPH, which would have to publish an annual report on all these staffing metrics. The legislation would also require IDPH to “make recommendations for minimum staffing standards for hospital workers in each hospital unit.”
In addition to protecting staff, advocates said this bill would allocate proper essential resources to underfunded hospitals around the state, including Mount Sinai Hospital on Chicago's West Side, a Level 1 trauma center that helps underserved and violence-impacted communities.
“Mount Sinai saved my son's life,” said Sonya Brown, who traveled from Chicago to Springfield recently to advocate for the safety-net hospital that treated her son after he was shot seven times in 2020.
“He was shot in the head, he was shot in the neck, he was shot in the chest, the abdomen and shoulder, and the arm,” Brown said. “If they wouldn't have gotten to him in time, he would have died.”
Mount Sinai serves as a health care provider for communities on both the South and West sides of Chicago, areas that experience some of Chicago's highest rates of gun violence. If the hospitals are not protected by measures in this legislation, advocates said, the victims in these neighborhoods risk longer travel times to alternative trauma centers.
They said the bills would help allocate essential resources and enforce staffing standards at safety-net hospitals to continue effectively serving vulnerable communities.
“All of our staff is overworked,” said Jessica Mendoza, a nursing assistant at Edward Hines Jr. VA Hospital in Hines. “A lot of our veterans are coming into the VA to get help with their health, but we do not have the staff to provide it.”
Mendoza, who has worked at the Hines VA Hospital for nearly two years, said that due to the low number of staff, they rarely get a break. She noted that the lack of sufficient staffing makes it difficult to provide the level of care that the veterans need.
The health care workers and advocates gathering in Springfield at the recent rally emphasized that without sufficient staffing and resources, the quality of patient care throughout Illinois hospitals will continue declining, and worker burnout will escalate.
“They expect you to do the job of five or six people but pay you for one.” Sen. Lakesia Collins, D-Chicago, said at the rally. Prior to joining the General Assembly, Collins was a CNA in nursing homes.
As the legislation stagnates at the Capitol, hospital workers and advocates said they plan to keep organizing and sharing their stories. They said they're calling on lawmakers to prioritize frontline health care workers and the patients who depend on them.
Grace Friedman is a student in the Medill Illinois News Bureau, a program at the Medill School of Journalism that provides local news outlets with state legislature and government coverage. She can be reached at gracefriedman2025@u.northwestern.edu.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
"The idea that the U.S. government is absolutely flouting our constitutional right to due process is terrifying, ..."
by Judith Ruiz-Branch Illinois News Connection
CHICAGO - An Illinois law professor is weighing in on what she called a "very public and open test of due process" for immigrants being deported from the United States without court hearings.
On Wednesday, a U.S. district judge denied the Justice Department's request to further delay the wrongful deportation case of a Maryland man, Kilmar Obrego Garcia, who was sent to a prison in El Salvador. Both a U.S. District Court and the U.S. Supreme Court have ordered the Trump administration to "facilitate" his return.
Victoria Carmona, clinical professor of immigration law, Chicago-Kent College of Law, said regardless of citizenship status, the lack of due process for one person is a crisis for everyone.
"The idea that the U.S. government is absolutely flouting our constitutional right to due process is terrifying, because if they're going to do it for one person, this is the test case," Carmona explained. "This is to see what can the government get away with and start pushing the odometer further and further away from due process. And it should be scary to everyone."
The government now has until May 5 to report any efforts it is making to comply with the court orders. In the meantime, Gov. JB Pritzker said Illinois is looking into ways to cut any state financial ties to Salvadoran companies in protest of that government's imprisonment of hundreds of deportees taken from the U.S. without court hearings.
Obrego Garcia already had a set of protections which said he could not return to his native country of El Salvador for fear of government persecution. The Justice Department said deporting him was an administrative error, although the Trump administration insists he is affiliated with a gang.
Carmona pointed out both countries' leaders are making the case more difficult to resolve.
"From El Salvador's perspective, I'm sure they're upset because their citizen had essentially claimed protections and saying that the El Salvadoran government would harm him if he returned," Carmona observed. "But this idea that the U.S. has no position to facilitate his return is an absolute lie."
Whatever happens to Obrego Garcia, Carmona added the unprecedented nature of the executive branch ignoring judicial orders has set the U.S. up for a constitutional crisis.
"At this point, I think Congress should be looking at impeachment," Carmona contended. "If Trump is going to clearly violate the Supreme Court orders, the resolution is impeachment."
St. Joseph-Ogden's Nolan Earley dives to second base trying to avoid the tag by Maroa-Forsyth's Issac Hanes in the third inning of the Spartans' home baseball game on Friday. SJO, who hasn't dropped game since March 29, defeated the Trojans, 6-1. Earley pitched a complete game striking out seven batters and giving up just one run on six hits on Friday at Meyer Field. The Spartans, who have posted just two losses in 26 games, are back in action at home on Monday for an Illini Prairie conference showdown against Monticello.
Here is a digest of some of the OurSentinel.com stories we published on this day in the past.
Keegan McCarty: "Everyone has a special meaning"
Going into this baseball season, Keegan McCarty had a long list of personal goals he was set on accomplishing this season.
That dream was interrupted by what appeared to be a temporary postponement to the season, and then weeks later the inevitable cancellation of the entire 2020 season, courtesy of the Coronavirus pandemic.
With Arms Open Wide benefit concert at the Rose Bowl
The Slavic Reference Service at the University of Illinois will be hosting a benefit concert on Saturday at the Rose Bowl Tavern in downtown Urbana.
Starting at 1pm, the concert will feature local bands from a wide range of styles and genres for three and a half hours. Admission is free.
SJO senior spotlights with Josh Sexton, Isaac Walden & Jackson Wooten
Advice from three departing St. Joseph-Ogden seniors in 2020:
Work hard, and to keep plugging away to be successful.
~ Jackson Wooten
Do not underestimate yourself.
~ Josh Sexton
Get all of your homework finished.
~ Isaac Walden
Mediterranean-style diet shown to reduce risk of preeclampsia during pregnancy
Photo: Edgar Castrejon/Unsplash
Following a Mediterranean-style diet during pregnancy was associated with a reduced risk of developing preeclampsia, and Black women appeared to have the greatest reduction of risk, according to new research published today in the Journal of the American Heart Association, an open access, peer-reviewed journal of the American Heart Association.
Most of us have wondered about life beyond the grave. Many today are in search of life before the grave. Given what many people traditionally believe about heaven, eternity and life beyond, it would certainly seem very valuable to think about a life beyond. However, what about life here?
Over 2,000 runners compete in Illinois half marathon
URBANA - LoriKay Paden, from Fletcher, NC, and Urbana's Brenda Hixson stop to pose for a photo while running along McHenry Avenue during the half marathon race at this year's Christie Clinic Illinois Marathon.
Six ways Trump's budget will damage rural Americans' way of life
Right now, Congress is working on a giant, fast-track bill that would make historic cuts to basic needs programs to finance another round of tax breaks for the wealthy and big corporations.
PONTIAC - People everywhere are conquering their cabin fever and are enjoying the great outdoors after a long, bitter winter. But before you head out for that hike, health care experts remind you to take precautions to avoid tick bites. Read more . . .
by Patty Starr
Going into this baseball season, Keegan McCarty had a long list of personal goals he was set on accomplishing this season.
That dream was interrupted by what appeared to be a temporary postponement to the season, and then weeks later the inevitable cancellation of the entire 2020 season, courtesy of the Coronavirus pandemic.
