Demographic characteristics include demographic makeup, race, ethnicity, illness rate, religion, level of education, and psychiatric diagnosis. Patterns of behavior emphasize most of these demographic factors. Age plays a significant role in how a person is treated in society. Community characteristics like income, employment, gender, education, and commuting are also detailed in demographics. Racial identification is frequently included in demographics (Minc et al., 2020). Within the racial categories of Asian, white, black, and African Americans, there are many different ethnicities and cultural backgrounds. Patients’ identifying information, such as their birth date and insurance, are included in their illness demographics. Medical billing is streamlined, healthcare quality is enhanced, and patient demographics bolster cultural competency. West Virginia has a total population of 1,775,156, with white, black, Asian, American Indian and Latino making up 93.1 percent, 3.7 percent, 0.3 percent, and 1.9 percent, respectively, according to estimates from the United States Census Bureau (2018). Around 14.1% are under the age of 65 and have a disability. Between 2017 and 2021, approximately 88.1% of the population will have completed high school. A significant proportion of the population is diagnosed with multiple chronic conditions, including diabetes, cancer, kidney and lung disease, arthritis, and elevated risk factors like obesity and high blood pressure.
There are many goals that disease prevention and health promotion share, and their functions are very similar. In order to completely alter the distribution of disease risk factors, the population approach to prevention suggests that interventions should be applied to entire populations (Minc et al., 2020). Environmental resilience and equity in human healthcare services are the most pressing issues addressed by the population health promotion and prevention initiative.
Between 2010 and 2021, the population of West Virginia increased by two out of every eleven years. The state’s population decreased by 0.8% between 2016 to 2017, and this was the most significant decline. Around 16.2 percent of adults in West Virginia have diabetes or approximately 232,336 people. The demographic reports suggest that diabetic trends have increased among American Indians and Non-Hispanic blacks (American Diabetes Association, 2022)
Like how clinical medicine is concerned with the development and expression of disease in the individual, epidemiology can be viewed as the development and expression of disease in a community. Public health officials are becoming increasingly concerned due to the persistent and, in some cases, growing significance of diseases. Population and comparison are two of epidemiology’s most essential concepts. A public health epidemiologist’s primary responsibilities include disease research, assessment, and policy formulation (ADA, 2022). The essential epidemiological tools are overview, supervision of program data analysis, and expeditious assessment. Multiple tools can frequently cover the same health outcome or interest indicator; However, different tools may provide different types of information.
The age, gender, and ethnicity of participants were gathered, according to the Diabetes in West Virginia report from 2021. Questions focused on general knowledge of type 2 diabetes, risk factors, symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention were used to assess knowledge.
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