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How Louisiana Should Improve Funding For Occupational Safety And Health

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In approximately five years since the Deep-Water Horizon incident in the Gulf, expectations for essential changes in safety, access, and preventative measures designed to capture a potential spill related illnesses should have taken place. Louisiana should expand funding for Occupational Safety & Health (OSHA) in efforts to prevent future rig explosions. Expand care to assist all Louisianans with getting care, or create changes in preventative care and treatment measures to combat those unhealthy trends that have arisen since the spill. However, given specific numbers and comparisons with other states, Louisiana appears to not be making much if any progress to gain ground in national rankings. By comparison, Illinois has increased its overall health ranking over 9 other states ranking as the 26th healthiest state. The difference between Louisiana and Illinois however, is the effort both states would need to create in order to get to that top ranking.

Louisiana and Illinois have 8 core measures that affect their state’s overall health ranking, including: High School Graduation, Infant Mortality, Cancer Deaths, Children in Poverty, Violent Crimes, and Cardiovascular Deaths. In all of these measures, Illinois ranks better. Looking closer at three specific ones, Occupational Fatalities, Obesity, and Lack of Health Insurance can be traced back to issues that could relate to the Gulf Spill. Occupational Fatalities and increases in OSHA could help reduce future oil rig

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