In the coming months, Georgia Public Broadcasting will be airing a 30-part radio series about your health and the health of Georgians. Each story is designed to help you understand more about health and sickness and the impact that health and health care policy has on our lives.

The health problems in Georgia are great.

• Health Status - The health status of Georgians ranked near the bottom - 45th among the states in 2004.
• Health Disparity - Health status varies greatly among Georgians. Infant mortality rates in African Americans are double that of Whites. Hispanics are twice as likely to die from diabetes as Whites. African Americans are more than twice as likely to die from hypertensive heart disease as Whites.
• Lack of Health Insurance - Our lifestyle - whether or not we smoke, blood pressure levels, obesity, stress, alcohol use and drug abuse - has a huge influence on our health. In fact, lifestyle has more of an impact on our health status than genetics, the environment we live in, and the healthcare we receive. When lifestyles are changed, health status improves.

The solutions to some of these problems are within our control. Communities, employers and employees, medical centers, and our health departments are developing innovative and imaginative approaches to solving these problems and to improving health.

In the coming months we will be reporting on these programs that help Georgians improve their eating habits, decrease their rates of smoking, and increase their amount of physical activity. We'll also be examining communities' novel approaches to screening for cancer, funding health care, and delivering primary health care services.

We welcome your comments and suggestions and look forward to hearing from you about your health in Georgia. Please write to us at healthdesk@gpb.org.

The GPB Health Desk is supported in part by a grant provided by