Alaska
Chronic disease report reflects some unhealthy habits among Alaskans • Alaska Beacon
Seven out of 10 Alaska adults are overweight or obese, and large percentages of adults in the state have chronic conditions like high blood pressure and high cholesterol that are linked to the leading causes of death, according to a new report released by the state Department of Health.
The 2024 Alaska Chronic Disease Facts summary, published by the department’s Division of Public Health, also showed that 33% of Alaska high school students were overweight or obese.
Large percentages of adults and teenagers are sedentary, according to the report. Among adults, 22% engaged in no regular, and among high school students, 82% failed to have the recommended 60 minutes of daily physical activity, the report said.
The report is based mostly on statistics from 2022, a year in which COVID-19 was the fourth-leading cause of death, after cancer, heart disease and unintentional injuries.
The annual chronic disease report does not show trends, though trends are monitored by the department in other reporting projects.
“It’s really meant as a snapshot,” said Andrea Fenaughty, a department public health scientist. Additionally, the report is meant to educate the public, she said. “Sometimes people don’t really know what chronic disease is, so it’s a way of getting that message out.”
Along with obesity, common chronic conditions in Alaska listed in the report include high blood pressure, high cholesterol, arthritis and asthma. Chronic diseases to which they are linked – diseases that last for long periods – include heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes and liver disease.
In all, seven of the top 10 causes of death in Alaska are linked to chronic conditions, Fenaughty said.
While cancer is Alaska’s leading cause of death, large percentages of Alaskans have missed the recommended screenings to detect the disease and treat it early.
Among women aged 40 and older, 40% had failed to get a mammogram in the prior two years. Among adults aged 50 to 75, 44% had failed to get recommended colorectal cancer screenings.
Cancer causes about a fifth of Alaska’s deaths, the report said. The most common causes of cancer deaths in Alaska as of 2022 were lung cancer, colorectal cancer, pancreatic cancer and prostate cancer, the report said. The most commonly diagnosed cancers in Alaska, as of 2020, were breast cancer, lung cancer, prostate cancer and colorectal cancer, the report said. Those four cancers represent about half of Alaska’s cancer cases, the report said.
Most of the statistics are similar to those in the chronic disease report issued by the division last year, which reflected data from 2021 and earlier.
However, there were a few signs of improvement.
Among high school students, the report said that 17% regularly use electronic cigarettes, also known as vapes, down from the 26% level in the previous report. Among adults without diabetes, 27% had not gotten the recommended blood-sugar tests within the prior three years, as recommended. That is significantly lower than the 54% who had missed those recommended tests in 2020, as reported in last year’s chronic disease brief.
The report concludes with some recommendations, including for individuals to make lifestyle changes to ward off the chronic conditions linked to poor health and fatal diseases. To help people do that, the Division of Public Health has a program, Fresh Start, that provides guidance and coaching.
Reflecting Alaska’s aging population, a new part of the Fresh Start program concerns dementia, Fenaughty said.
“Right now, it’s largely focused on awareness of dementia and the fact that there are really lots of things you could do to reduce your chances of getting dementia. People don’t often think of it as being preventable,” she said.
Additionally, the Division of Public Health has a Play Every Day program that encourages fitness and healthy habits among youth.
The report also recommends some community actions and policies to help people pursue healthier lifestyles and habits. In sum, said the report: “Make the healthy choice the easier choice.” Examples of helpful policies listed by the report are tobacco-free workplaces, easier access to safe places to walk and otherwise exercise, good physical education programs at schools and disease-prevention programs at workplaces.
Reducing chronic health problems through public policy is a long-term effort, Fenaughty said. She pointed to decades of tobacco-cessation policies that led to current smoking rates being much lower than they were in the past.
“It did take a couple of decades, and something like that involves all kinds of people at the community level, at the statewide level, all different partners,” she said.
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Multiple skiers were reported trapped in the Alaska backcountry after being swept up in an avalanche, Alaska State Troopers said Wednesday.
The number of skiers and their conditions were not immediately available.
The slide happened late Tuesday afternoon near the skiing community of Girdwood, located about 40 miles south of Anchorage, Austin McDaniel, a spokesperson for the Alaska State Troopers, said in a text to The Associated Press.
“Troopers received a report of an avalanche that caught multiple individuals who were heliskiing yesterday afternoon near the west fork of 20 Mile River,” McDaniel said. “The company that they were skiing with attempted to recover the skiers but were unable to due to the depth of the snow.”
The size of the avalanche and the depth of the snow was not immediately known.
He said troopers will attempt to reach the site on Wednesday, and may need an aircraft to get to the remote spot well off the Seward Highway.
Girdwood is the skiing capital of Alaska, and home to the Hotel Alyeska, at the base of Mount Alyeska, where people ski or snowboard.
At the top of the mountain is the Seven Glaciers Restaurant, named for its view.
Each winter, 25 to 30 people die in avalanches in the U.S., according to the National Avalanche Center.
One person was killed in an avalanche in central Colorado on Feb. 22. Authorities in Grand County responded to what they described as a skier-triggered avalanche in a steep area known as “The Fingers” above Berthoud Pass.
It was the second reported avalanche in the county that day.
That avalanche death was the third in Colorado this winter and the second fatality in less than a week in that state, according to the Colorado Avalanche Information Center.
A Crested Butte snowboarder was killed Feb. 20 in a slide west of Silverton.
Elsewhere, three people died in avalanches Feb. 17 — one person near Lake Tahoe and two backcountry skiers in Oregon’s Cascade Mountains.
On Feb. 8, a well-known outdoor guide was caught in an avalanche in Utah and was killed.
Alaska
Trump Administration ‘working on a gigantic natural gas pipeline in Alaska’: Sen. Sullivan reacts to President’s address to Congress
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – President Donald Trump addressed Congress Tuesday evening with the theme of his speech being “Renewal of the American Dream.”
In part, Trump said that his administration is working on a large natural gas pipeline in Alaska. He referenced Japan, South Korea and other nations as potential partners with the United States on a liquefied natural gas (LNG) deal.
The President said that each country would be spending trillions of dollars as part of the deal, adding that, “it will truly be spectacular.”
Senator Dan Sullivan spoke with Alaska’s News Source immediately following Trump’s congressional address.
“It was an important speech,” Sullivan said in an interview via Zoom.
“The President laid out a common sense agenda that he’s already implementing in a huge way. [He talked] a lot about the border, securing the border… a lot about big things, big things for America,” Sullivan said.
“I got to tell you because I worked this really hard with Governor Dunleavy… the fact that the President of the United States was highlighting the Alaska LNG (liquefied natural gas) project as one of the biggest things he wants to get done for the country was huge for our state, huge for our country and it was really really exciting to be in there when he talked about this project,” he added.
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Alaska
Alaska Permanent Fund has a 46% chance in the next decade of failing to fund services and the PFD, forecasts show, as lawmakers talk reforms
JUNEAU — The Alaska Permanent Fund has a serious risk of failing to fund state services and the Permanent Fund dividend in the next decade, according to projections by the nonpartisan Legislative Finance Division.
The Permanent Fund’s board has long urged lawmakers to convert the fund’s two-account structure into an endowment model to ensure its long-term sustainability. Legislators have started discussing amendments to the Alaska Constitution to follow the board’s recommendations.
Annual withdrawals would be capped at 5% of the Permanent Fund’s overall value. But that figure could be subject to debate.
The Legislature in 2018 approved Senate Bill 26, which established the current 5% draw limit in state statute. The measure allowed Permanent Fund earnings to start contributing to the state budget.
Since then, the Permanent Fund has provided the bulk of state revenue for services and the PFD. But the fund has been stressed.
According to modeling by the Legislative Finance Division, the Permanent Fund has an almost 50% chance in the next decade of failing to provide the annual draw for services and the dividend.
”That’s scary,” said Jason Brune, chair of the Permanent Fund’s board.
Permanent Fund managers started the fiscal year in July with a roughly $600 million shortfall. Investment earnings have since helped bridge that gap, but Deven Mitchell, CEO of the Alaska Permanent Fund Corp., said that exposed a worrying trend.
”That was the first time that had happened. So, it’s the canary in the coal mine,” he said Tuesday to the joint Legislative and Budget Audit Committee.
Most of the $81 billion Permanent Fund is constitutionally protected. However, the fund’s investment earnings are deposited into the $9.4 billion Earnings Reserve Account, which can be spent by a simple majority of legislators.
For over 20 years, the Permanent Fund’s board of trustees has called on lawmakers to establish a single-account structure and a 5% draw limit in the constitution. The board issued a 49-page resolution last year urging lawmakers to enact those reforms.
Trustees warned that depleting the spendable portion of the Permanent Fund would “immediately result in a fiscal crisis” that would jeopardize the budget and the PFD.
“We want to ensure that there’s an ability to provide a payment to the state of Alaska each and every year. We don’t want to have a 46% probability of failure,” Mitchell said.
Prior to the enactment of SB 26, Alexei Painter, director of the Legislative Finance Division, said the state had been running a $3 billion deficit each year for several years.
This year, legislators are facing a $536 million deficit over two fiscal years based on status quo spending. Senators recently unveiled revenue measures, including oil tax hikes, as ways to potentially bridge that fiscal gap.
“Oil is not paying the bills anymore,” Anchorage Republican Sen. Cathy Giessel said Tuesday.
Advocates say a single-account structure would act as a spending cap for lawmakers and ensure the long-term stability of the Permanent Fund. Additionally, it would avoid the need for an annual inflation-proofing appropriation — $1 billion this year — to preserve its real value.
Anchorage independent Rep. Calvin Schrage introduced a constitutional amendment last month that followed the board’s recommendations. He said the Permanent Fund provides a reliable source of revenue, and that it should be protected in the constitution.
“There’s a real risk that the Legislature could overdraw the fund. We’ve seen attempts to do that multiple times,” he said.
Lawmakers say there is a broad recognition that Permanent Fund reforms are needed.
Anchorage Sen. James Kaufman, a member of the Senate’s GOP minority, said the potential for a cash flow crunch is one of the state’s “most ignored financial issues.”
Kaufman introduced his own constitutional amendment proposal for a single-account structure. The draw rate would be capped at 5.25%, but Kaufman said Monday that it could be amended.
Sitka Republican Sen. Bert Stedman argued Tuesday that the 5% limit was already too high. He said that pushed the fund’s managers into “more aggressive asset classes” to meet its statutory requirements.
But the Legislative Finance Division cautioned that lowering the draw rate to 4.5% would see the deficit balloon by an additional $380 million.
Members of the Senate majority are set to introduce their own Permanent Fund constitutional amendment proposal in the coming days, Giessel said Tuesday.
A constitutional amendment requires support from two-thirds of lawmakers in the House and the Senate. Unlike regular bills, the governor cannot veto a constitutional amendment. Instead, it would then go for an up-or-down vote at the next statewide election.
The Alaska Constitution was last amended in 2004.
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