Healthy People United States Research Paper 2022

Running Head: HEALTHY PEOPLE 2020
HEALTHY PEOPLE 2020: COPD
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note

HEALTHY PEOPLE 20201
Introduction
Healthy People 2020 is an initiative by the government of United States with an agenda
to enhance the quality of health in the people of the nation. It has a statement of national health
objectives that are designed to find out the most preventable health threats and plan national
goals to diminish the health conditions. One of the health problems identified in Healthy People
2020 is chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which is a respiratory disease
(Healthypeople.gov, 2020). It is a lung disease in which breathing becomes difficult and it is
categorized into two types. The first one is chronic bronchitis, which has the involvement of
mucus and cough, and the second type is emphysema, which is the damage to lungs. COPD is a
progressive disease that is characterized by breathing related problems and airflow blockage. It is
the third leading cause of death in the United States because approximately 142,000 people were
killed due to COPD in 2014. This paper will discuss the Healthy People 2020 initiative for this
COPD and the recent trends and issues to prevent and control this public health threat (US
Department of Health and Human Services, 2014).
Discussion
The major issue with COPD is that it can cause due to the environmental factors, which
cannot be prevented all the time. One of the reason for the prevalence of COPD is exposure to
smoke, which can be due to pollution, smoke or chemical hazards. Tobacco is the most common
risk factor of COPD because according to the statistics in Indiana, 45% of the population is
currently smoking, 33.4% of people were a smoker during their life and 21.6% said that they
never smoked. However, genetic factor is also a reason for the incidence of this disease because
not every smoker is diagnosed with COPD. After quitting cigarettes, it might slow down the

HEALTHY PEOPLE 20202
process of the development of this disease (Salvi, 2014). The vulnerability of this disease is not
targeted towards any gender, but it is seen that most of the women die due to COPD since the
year 2000. In Indiana, 8.3% of adults were diagnosed with COPD when compared to the national
data of 6.3%. In 2011, majority of the females were to be suffering from COPD than males. The
symptoms of this disease include excessive mucous production, wheezing and chest tightness,
shortness of breath and chronic coughing (Jalota & Jain, 2016). The difference between asthma
and COPD is that in asthma, inflammation of airways occur and it is an irritable response to an
allergen, and in COPD, the lung goes through an obstruction and hyperinflation due to the
exposure to certain irritants. The readmission due to COPD is a common scenario in the US
healthcare system because patients between the ages of 40-64 years are prone to getting
readmitted within 30 days of a COPD related hospital admission than patients who are older than
65. The public insurance allows 14.77% in medicare and 16.27% in Medicaid for highest
admission rates. The major cause of morbidity and mortality in US is COPD and the patients
vary in terms of imaging, clinical and biological phenotypes. Acute COPD exacerbation
(AECOPD) is one of the phenotypes and the readmission rate for this after discharge is 10-20%
within 30 days of admission (Ford, 2015). The people who are readmitted have a higher chance
of mortality and poor health outcome than people who are not readmitted. Several interventions
have been identified to reduce the pattern of readmissions but it is not of any help as it is not
reducing mortality. One of the reason might less knowledge to identify patients who are at a
higher risk of readmission and inability to utilize resources for these high risk patients.
The epidemiological data suggests that 100,000 deaths occurs due to COPD annually in
United States. In the year 2010, 15 million people were diagnosed of this disease by their
healthcare providers and around 12 million cases remain undiagnosed who susceptible to this