“While BMI may have strong correlations with the amount of body weight composed of body fat in studies of averages of large groups of people, it does not directly measure body fat for an individual,” Dr. Scott Hagan writes. “Therefore, people with the same BMI may have substantially different body fat percentage based on a variety of factors such as age, muscle mass, sex and race.”
“Nearly one-third of Mississippians live with high cholesterol,” cardiologist Dr. Kevin Hall writes, warning that insurance companies are statistically more likely to deny life-saving medications for Black and hispanic cardiovascular-disease patients, especially women. Hall, a Tupelo, Miss., native, encourages Mississippians to practice preventative care with regular screenings, to educate themselves further on risk factors and to consider effective prescription access for better patient outcomes.
The widely respected Jackson Heart Study began in 2000 with the recruitment of more than 5,000 African Americans from the Jackson metro area who have since undergone comprehensive health screenings at intervals to generate data for research purposes.
The Centers for Disease Control was warning of a possible link between COVID-19 and pediatric diabetes earlier this month. Dr. Jessica Lilley hopes that the broader medical community is finally catching up.
Mississippi’s intensive-care units are finally seeing some relief from the waning delta-variant surge. With the number of new cases of COVID-19 shrinking, the state’s hospital system is stepping back from the worst period of the pandemic so far.
The Mississippi State Department of Health’s Director of Health Protection Jim Craig warned that hospitals across the state are still filled with patients waiting to be transferred out of the emergency room and into intensive care unit beds.
With each passing month of the pandemic, Mississippi doctors are growing increasingly concerned that COVID-19 is linked to a massive increase in new diagnoses of pediatric diabetes throughout the state.
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