HJNO Jul/Aug 2025

MAHA REPORT 14  JUL / AUG 2025 I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF NEW ORLEANS   1 Wager, E., Telesford, I., Rakshit, S., Kurani, N., & Cox, C. (2024, October 9). How does the quality of the U.S. health system compare to other countries? Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker. https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/quality-u-s-healthcare-system- compare-countries/. 2 Tikkanen, R., & Abrams, M. K. (2020, January 30). U.S. health care from a global perspective, 2019: Higher spending, worse outcomes? The Commonwealth Fund. https://doi.org/10.26099/7avy-fc29: contentReference[oaicite:3]{index=3} https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2020/jan/us-health-care- global-perspective-2019 3 Wisk, L. E., & Sharma, N. (2025). Prevalence and Trends in Pediatric-Onset Chronic Conditions in the United States, 1999-2018. Academic Pediatrics, 102810. 4 Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. (2024). National health expenditure (NHE) fact sheet. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://www.cms.gov/ data-research/statistics-trends-and-reports/national-health-expenditure-data/nhe-fact-sheet. 5 Bureau of Economic Analysis. (2024, February 28). Gross domestic product, fourth quarter and year 2023 (second estimate). U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. https:// www.bea.gov/news/2024/gross-domestic-product-fourth-quarter-and-year-2023-second-estimate. 6 Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. (n.d.). Gross Domestic Product [GDP]. FRED, Federal Reserve Economic Data. Retrieved May 16, 2025, from https://fred.stlouisfed . org/series/GDP. 7 National Survey of Children’s Health. (n.d.). NSCH 2018-19: Number of current or lifelong health conditions, nationwide, age in 3 groups. ChildHealthData.org. Retrieved February 24, 2021, from https://www.childhealthdata.org . 8 Wisk, L. E., & Sharma, N. (2025). Prevalence and Trends in Pediatric-Onset Chronic Conditions in the United States, 1999–2018. Academic Pediatrics, 25(4), 102810. 9 Bethell, C. D., Kogan, M. D., Strickland, B. B., Schor, E. L., Robertson, J., & Newacheck, P. W. (2011). A national and state profile of leading health problems and health care quality for US children: key insurance disparities and across-state variations. Academic pediatrics, 11(3), S22-S33. 10 Novelly, T. (2022, September 28). New Pentagon study shows 77% of young Americans are ineligible for military service. Military.com. https://www.military.com/daily- news/2022/09/28/new-pentagon-study-shows-77-of-young-americans-are-ineligible-military-service.html. 11 National Center for Health Statistics. (2021, January 29). Prevalence of overweight, obesity, and severe obesity among children and adolescents aged 2–19 years: United States, 1963–1965 through 2017–2018. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 12 Fryar, C. D., Carroll, M. D., & Afful, J. (2020). Prevalence of overweight, obesity, and severe obesity among children and adolescents aged 2–19 years: United States, 1963–1965 through 2017–2018. NCHS Health E-Stats. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/obesity-child-17-18/obesity- child.htm. 13 Simmonds, M., Llewellyn, A., Owen, C. G., & Woolacott, N. (2016). Predicting adult obesity from childhood obesity: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Obesity reviews: an official journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity, 17(2), 95–107. https://doi.org/10.1111/obr.12334. 14 Freedman, D. S., Mei, Z., Srinivasan, S. R., Berenson, G. S., & Dietz, W. H. (2007). Cardiovascular risk factors and excess adiposity among overweight children and adolescents: the Bogalusa Heart Study. The Journal of pediatrics, 150(1), 12–17.e2. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpeds.2006.08.042. 15 Cizza, G., Brown, R. J., & Rother, K. I. (2012). Rising incidence and challenges of childhood diabetes. A mini review. Journal of endocrinological investigation, 35, 541-546. Introduction The health of American children is in crisis. Despite outspending peer nations by more than double per capita on healthcare, the United States ranks last in life expectancy among high-income countries – and suffers higher rates of obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. 12 Today’s children are the sickest generation inAmerican history in terms of chronic disease and these preventable trends continue to worsen each year, 3 posing a threat to our nation’s health, economy, and military readiness. In 2023 alone, national health expenditures were projected to grow by 4.4%, 4 outpacing real U.S. GDP growth of just 2.5%. 5 Yet despite the ever-growing financial investment in the U.S. healthcare system, American life expectancy lags other high-income countries. Over the past century, U.S. GDP has grown over 30,000%. 6 Today, American farmers feed the world, American companies lead the world, andAmerican energy powers the world. This economic growth has been a force for technology, health and agriculture innovations that have increased U.S. life expectancy by more than 30 years compared to 1900. But the same forces of modernization and industrialization have also introduced threats to our health and revealed growing inefficiencies in our ability to respond to them. Over the past two generations, we have failed to address the alarming rise in childhood chronic disease. Federal and state policy have sometimes been guided more by corporate profit than the public interest. Many of our leading scientific and medical institutions have grown complacent, defaulting to symptommanagement rather than harnessing gold-standard science to prevent and reverse root causes. The U.S. food and agricultural systems have embraced ultra-processed ingredients and synthetic chemicals. Meanwhile, our healthcare system has over-medicalized children, frequently masking and compounding underlying issues. Coupled with rising screen addiction and Louisiana has the third-lowest life expectancy in the U.S., at 74.07 years. Source: https://globaldatalab.org/shdi/maps/ lifexp/USA/