CDC Reports Smoking Rates Highest Among People with Disabilities

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released the results of a new study that shows that people with disabilities are 50% more likely to smoke than those who do not have a disability. The exact figures are 29.9% of those with disabilities are smokers, while with those who are not disabled have 19.8% who smoke.

Looking at figures from 2004, the state with the highest percentage of disabled people who smoke was Delaware with 39.4% and the lowest was Puerto Rico with 16.5% of the disabled population smoking.

The study also found that close to 70% of the people with disabilities who smoke and who had also visited a doctor within the last year had been advised by the doctor to quit. But more than 40% of those who had been advised to stop were never given any information on treatments that are available to help them.

The study was based on data that was collected from the 2004 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveilllance System and it encompasses data from all 50 states as well as Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The BRFSS is an ongoing and continuing state-based, random-digit-dialed telephone survey of the civilian, non-institutionalized U.S. population aged 18 years or older. It does not only focus on the issue of smoking, but it looks at different health risk factors as well as preventive measures.

There are many factors that put people with disabilities at a higher risk for declining health including the high rate of smokers, and difficulties in being able to get preventive services like being able to get to a doctor's office, for instance. While the researchers are not sure why there is such a high level of smoking in the disabled population, it is an issue they are planing to look into.

Research has confirmed that people with disabilities are less likely than people without disabilities to receive preventive care and are more subject to illness and disease.