Health Statistics

Bringing awareness to families who are facing the dramatic rise in chronic health conditions and disabilities.

Immune System Disorders

  • Allergies: In 2021, just over 25% of children in the United States had at least one allergic condition.6
  • Autoimmune Thyroid Illness: Autoimmune thyroiditis (AIT) is the most common autoimmune endocrine disease and has an estimated prevalence of approximately 3-5% of the general population.1
  • Celiac: Celiac disease affects 1 in 300 children in the United States. That number rises to 1 in 10 for children with a parent or sibling who has the disease.4
  • Arthritis: Arthritis affects 53.9% of adults age 75 and older.11

Inflammatory Conditions

  • Eczema: It is estimated that 1 in 10 individuals will develop eczema during their lifetime, with prevalence peaking in early childhood.14
  • Asthma: According to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, currently, there are about 4.5 million children in America under the age of 18 with asthma - which is around 6.5% of kids.2

Metabolic Conditions

  • Diabetes: The rate of new cases (or incidence) of diabetes in youths younger than 20 years increased in the United States between 2002 and 2015, with a 4.8% increase per year for type 2 diabetes and a 1.9% increase per year for type 1 diabetes.7
  • Iron Deficiency Anemia: According to the World Health Organization, 39.8% of children aged 6-59 months around the world have anemia.18
  • Obesity: According to the National Survey of Children's Health, in 2021-2022, 17.0% of youth ages 10 to 17 had obesity.16

Mental Health Conditions

  • Substance Use Disorder: In 2022, 48.7 million people aged 12 or older (17.3%) had a substance use disorder (SUD) in the past year.17
  • Eating Disorders: In the US, from 2018 to 2022, health visits related to eating disorders more than doubled among people under the age of 17, and visits for all eating disorders among this age group increased by 107.4%, from approximately 50,000 visits in early 2018 to >100 000 in 2022.3
  • Depression: 15.08% of youth (age 12-17) report suffering from at least one major depressive episode (MDE) in the past year.13
  • Anxiety: Childhood anxiety disorders are very common, affecting 1 in 8 children.15

Neurodevelopmental Disorders

  • Attention-Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD): An estimated 7 million (11.4%) U.S. children aged 3–17 years have ever been diagnosed with ADHD.10
  • Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): According to the CDC's Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network, the rate of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the United States is 1 in 36 (2.8%) for 8-year-old children. This is higher than the 2018 estimate of 1 in 44 (2.3%).8
  • Epilepsy: In 2021, 1.1% of US adults, or about 2.9 million people, reported having active epilepsy.5

Genetic Conditions

  • Cystic Fibrosis: There are close to 40,000 children and adults living with cystic fibrosis in the United States (and an estimated 105,000 people have been diagnosed with CF across 94 countries).12
  • Congenital Heart Disease: Congenital Heart Disease is the most common type of birth defect - affecting around 1% of children in America.9

REFERENCES

    1 Adegbola, S. O., & Fapohunda, S. O. (2022). Autoimmune thyroiditis: Epidemiology, clinical features, and management. National Library of Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11605-022-05035-6
    2 Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America. (n.d.). Asthma facts. Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America. https://aafa.org/asthma/asthma-facts/
    3 Blinder, E. J., & Donnelly, M. P. (2023). The effects of early childhood adversity on mental health and behavior in adolescence. The Journal of Pediatrics, 246, 13-21. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpeds.2023.05.006
    4 Celiac Disease Foundation. (n.d.). Celiac disease in children. Celiac Disease Foundation. https://celiac.org/about-celiac-disease/celiac-disease-in-children/
    5 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2023, February 9). Epilepsy data and statistics. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/epilepsy/data-research/facts-stats/index.html
    6 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2023, February 17). In 2021, just over one-quarter of children in the U.S. had a diagnosed chronic health condition. National Center for Health Statistics. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db459.htm
    7 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2020, February 14). Trends in incidence of Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes Among Youths. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 69(6), 167–172. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6906a3.htm
    8 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2023, March 23). CDC report: One in 36 U.S. children identified with autism spectrum disorder. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2023/p0323-autism.html
    9 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2023, March 23). Data and statistics on birth defects: Heart defects. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/heart-defects/data/index.html
    10 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2023, March 29).Data and statistics on ADHD. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/adhd/data/index.html
    11 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2023, May 25). In 2022, the age-adjusted percentage of adults with serious psychological distress was 3.5%. National Center for Health Statistics. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db497.htm
    12 Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. (n.d.). About cystic fibrosis. Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. https://www.cff.org/intro-cf/about-cystic-fibrosis
    13 Mental Health America. (2022). Mental health in youth: 2022 data. Mental Health America. https://www.mhanational.org/issues/2022/mental-health-america-youth-data
    14 National Eczema Association. (n.d.). Eczema facts. National Eczema Association. https://nationaleczema.org/research/eczema-facts/
    15 National Institute of Mental Health. (2020). Childhood anxiety disorders. In Mental health information for children and adolescents (pp. 1-10). National Institutes of Health. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK476265/#
    16 State of Childhood Obesity. (2023). Childhood obesity rates among youth aged 6-17. State of Childhood Obesity. https://stateofchildhoodobesity.org/demographic-data/ages-6-17/
    17 Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2023, November 13). HHS, SAMHSA release 2022 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) data. SAMHSA. https://www.samhsa.gov/newsroom/press-announcements/20231113/hhs-samhsa-release-2022-nsduh-data
    18 World Health Organization. (2021, December). Anaemia. World Health Organization. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/anaemia