The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly
Report focuses on the dangers of binge drinking and how teens are influenced by
adult woman to drink. In this article, an example of the some of the findings
include: binge drinking is responsible for half of the 23,000 youth deaths in 5
year, binge drinking is a danger for social problems among women and girls,
including alcohol abused pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, and breast
cancer. Much of the data contributing to this report comes from BRFSS surveys,
The CDC and YRBS surveys.
Binge drinking is
a huge Public Health issue because it is responsible for thousands of lives and
also leads to physical problems like, injuries, violence, liver disease, heart
disease, stroke, breast and other cancers, reduced cognitive function, and
alcohol dependence. Binge drinking is also a Public Health issue because it
also affects the development of your brain. Since the brain is not fully
developed until age 25, damaging it with alcohol has a major affect on its
development.
Most of the data collected in this
report was shocking. I had no idea that binge drinking took so many young
women’s lives, but I was not shocked with the affects of binge drinking. However,
since the data was collected by survey, there are some limitations. One
limitation being, you can’t always trust the integrity of people taking the
survey, especially with surveys about teens and underage drinking. They might
not want to admit to authorities that they take part in illegal drinking. BRFSS
and YRBS data are self-reported survey, which shows that people might be biased
or dishonest. Another limitation to collecting data through surveys is not
having a large enough sample group to represent the entire population. Also, BRFSS
can’t collect data from woman living on college campuses or military bases.
It’s already
difficult to convince teens and young adults to resist binge drinking and there
are already many campaigns to educate the teens on the dangers of drinking. But,
one of the biggest ways to prevent binge drinking with women would be to
educate them on what the alcohol does to your body, specifically, on how the
dry calorie intake affects their bodies. Young women usually
have to take a health class while in high school that already gives
teens the dangers of binge drinking. Also, there are several advertisements and
commercials being broadcasted on television on how teens and adults should
never drink and drive. Technically, educating women from a nutritional
standpoint might draw their attention more than sicknesses. If they can’t see that they could end up with cancer or heart disease later on in life, then to them it might not be
true, but if teens and adults could physically see their body changing from
excess alcohol use, they might think twice before drinking again.
Laura,
ReplyDeleteI think you did a great job explaining your points of view on this issue and I thought your post brought to light some things I had never thought of. In particular, I think that your idea to focus more on something that young women would resonate with, the dry calorie intake of alcohol, as a way to deter binge drinking was really innovative and seems like something that would definitely help improve this problem. Additionally, explaining the fact that binge drinking especially results in negative effects on the brains of adolescents in particular helped to show just how pressing this issue is. I think to add to your statements on why this is a public health issue, the fact that binge drinking not only can lead to negative consequences for those who partake directly, but also has shown to lead to pregnancy in women, and thus it can have detrimental effects on fetuses as well. Therefore, the fact that this is so prevalent in females, specifically, makes this issue something that needs to be addressed and improved as soon as possible.
Good job!
Alyssa
Laura,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your submission. You did a good job in your first paragraph of summarizing some of the main points. In your second paragraph, you identify that binge drinking contributes to loss of life and also to chronic disease. You also identify that alcohol affects brain development, but I challenge you to say why this is a public health issue as well. You mention very well how it affects the individual's brain, but why does this affect health for the population?
In the third paragraph, you mention the integrity of the people taking the survey. I think this is certainly true. Why else might they not tell the truth? Perhaps another reason is that when a person is drunk and binging, they often cannot keep track of the number of drinks they have ingested. How do you think the data might have changed if collected on college campuses.
Your last paragraph gets at the issue from an interesting angle. How effective, though, do you think educational programs in public health are? Are there other more effective interventions? A tax on alcohol? Curbing advertisements to young people? etc? Also, remember to think about unintended consequences of your programs. For instance, do young women need more body image pressure than they get from the media already?
Erin