Trends in Mortality for Non-Communicable Diseases in Mexican Border Municipalities

Abstract

Trends in Mortality for Non-Communicable Diseases in Mexican Border MunicipalitiesAbstract Number:2827 Gabriel Anaya, Wael Al-Delaimy*, and Melissa Floca Gabriel Anaya University of California San Diego, United States, E-mail Address: [email protected] Search for more papers by this author , Wael Al-Delaimy* University of California San Diego, United States, E-mail Address: [email protected] Search for more papers by this author , and Melissa Floca University of California San Diego, United States, E-mail Address: [email protected] Search for more papers by this author AbstractIn recent decades, Mexico’s public health system has undergone important transformations. Simultaneously, the northern border area with the United States has seen significant expansion of urban areas. There is limited data on how such changes have impacted health at the municipal and state level in the border area, especially with regards to Non-Communicable Diseases. To increase our understanding of trends in Non-Communicable Diseases in the 37 municipalities and 6 Mexican States that touch the US border, we use a dataset of almost six million death certificates in Mexico spanning the time period from 1998 to 2011 and apply the WHO Global Burden of Disease (GBD) methodology to recode and reclassify cause of death based on ICD-10 codes. Standardized Mortality Rates (SMR) were age-adjusted to the population of Mexico. Municipalities where sub-grouped based on population size into: Urban (large) and Rural (small) municipalities. We used STATA v.12 and SPSS v.21 to manage and analyze the datasets and ArcGis to define the border and non-border municipalities. We found that that Non-Communicable Diseases are consistently the major causes of death across all municipalities, and several folds higher than common infectious diseases. Ischemic heart disease is the major cause of death in both rural and urban border areas but rural areas experienced much higher increase between 1999 (137.1/10-5) and 2011 (174.1/10-5) than urban SMR that was similar to rural SMR in 1999 but did not increase substantially. This trend was similarly observed in rural areas for cancer (66.6-100.2/10-5), diabetes (73.6-112.9/10-5), and chronic respiratory illnesses (33.6-45.1/10-5). Our data indicate a shift of the burden of diseases in northern Mexico to Non-Communicable Diseases, and there is a much higher increase in rural areas compared to larger urban cities. Addressing such shifts for the border area and the causes behind it will impact the overall health of the Mexican population.