Chelsey Bowles said she doesn’t stink anymore.
“Not smelling like an ashtray is nice, definitely,” the Hanover resident said.
Bowles said she no longer coughs in the mornings, her taste buds are back, she can smell again, and walking up stairs is no big deal.
That’s the difference, she said, between smoking cigarettes and vaping.
Read more:
Southwestern Pennsylvania has low unemployment, a plethora of high school and college graduates and relatively safe streets, but residents are more likely to smoke cigarettes and be overweight compared to a group other major U.S. metro areas, according to a University of Pittsburgh report released Wednesday.
The “2015 Pittsburgh Today & Tomorrow Report” from Pitt’s University Center for Social and Urban Research compared 11 quality-of-life factors in Southwestern Pennsylvania to 14 other metro areas.
Researchers found that while the region “continues to be a national model for economic recovery and public safety, the region still has major deficiencies in overcoming issues related to the environment, infrastructure, public health, and other matters that are key to the quality of life for most Americans.”
Read more: http://triblive.com/news/adminpage/8130203-74/percent-residents-report#ixzz3WjladgL5
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Perhaps the Wilkes-Barre metro area parties too much.
The Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area ranked as the fourth-most indulgent metro in the United States by the personal finance website badcredit.org. The website used data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and credit information from Experian, a credit reporting bureau, to analyze how indulgent residents are in 105 metro areas.
They looked at the obesity rate, alcohol consumption, number of smokers and the average consumer debt to determine the most indulgent metros. The Scranton/Wilkes-Barre metro came in at No. 4
with:
■ 7.8 percent of residents claiming to be heavy drinkers.
■ 21.5 percent who say they smoke everyday.
■ An obesity rate of 31.9 percent.
■ $28,974 in average consumer debt.
Read more:
http://citizensvoice.com/news/scranton-w-b-among-most-indulgent-cities-1.1849010
Locator map of the Scranton-Wilkes-Barre Metropolitan Statistical Area in the northeastern part of the of . (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
WILKES-BARRE, PA — Northeastern Pennsylvania should be concerned about its health.
Luzerne and Lackawanna counties possess a “hard-living” population that is predominantly overweight, smokes and drinks too much, has easy access to illegal drugs, has a rising increase in mental-health issues and is living in poverty, according to data released Tuesday at the Community Health Needs Assessment forum sponsored by Geisinger Wyoming Valley Medical Center.
Teri Ooms, executive director at the Institute for Public Policy and Economic Development in Wilkes-Barre, gave a presentation to about 6o people representing various agencies and health care facilities that showed the area’s needs and offered recommendations to improve health care, increase services and retain patients who seek care outside the area.
Read more: http://timesleader.com/news/local-news-news/1358272/Regions-health-checkup-results-less-than-stellar
Counties constituting Northeastern Pennsylvania (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
A project aimed at establishing a benchmark of regional residents’ health reinforced something already known — Northeastern Pennsylvania residents, generally speaking, are not very healthy.
The study, conducted by the Scranton-based Northeast Regional Cancer Institute, was done so the effects of the Marcellus Shale industry on the region’s health can be gauged in the future.
“We wanted to create a baseline on the health of the community to use as a benchmark against future studies to see what effects, if any, and to what extent the industry will have had on the region’s health,” said Bob Durkin, president of the Cancer Institute.
Dr. Samuel Lesko, principal investigator for the survey, said a variety of issues related to “fracking” and other processes used to produce natural gas have contributed to community concerns about potential adverse health outcomes.
Read more: http://www.timesleader.com/news/local-news/405891/Study:-Poor-health-habits-prevalent-in-region
Image via Wikipedia
The five-county region of Luzerne, Lackawanna, Columbia, Sullivan and Wyoming counties has the highest incidence of heart disease death in Pennsylvania, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
These counties are the only ones in the state falling into the CDC’s most distressing category, showing 455 to 651 of every 100,000 deaths in people over age 35 are a direct result of heart disease.
Dr. Thomas Isaacson, chief of cardiology at Geisinger Wyoming Valley Medical Center’s Richard and Marion Pearsall Heart Hospital in Plains Township, said this area has a high rate of heart disease due to a number of risk factors here, especially smoking.
“We know smoking has a big impact on this,” Isaacson said. “We have a high prevalence of smoking in our communities.
Read more: http://thedailyreview.com/news/area-counties-have-highest-rate-of-heart-disease-in-state-1.1261599
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