Community Commentary:

A presentation to three area hospitals on our local public health measures (“Asthma is getting a lot worse in city, survey says,” May 30) could be a start for a regular report on the state of the health of the city’s population.

It’s not surprising that heart disease continues to be the leading cause of death. From the last Quality of Life report (2002 p. 25) the three leading causes of death were due to heart disease, cancer and stroke with rates of 33.8%, 25.1%, and 8.7% respectively. So what are we doing to improve those statistics?

As a matter of city policy, very little.

Glendale does not provide the funds to collect that information, and councilmen have consistently shown a lack of interest in initiating health or social policies. These two facts are linked. The maxim in management and information technology is, “You don’t get what you deserve; you get what you measure.”

But in reality, measurement is simply the starting point. For example, if you are interested in getting a single performance indicator of your the current state of your health, it would be your life expectancy. Recently, I tried a life-expectancy calculator on the Web and given my diet, exercise, family history and basic health measures, like cholesterol and blood pressure, I have the potential to live to be 90.

Most of us have the ability to control some of the causes of heart disease. We can opt to eat meat products once a week or less. We can exercise for at least 30 minutes every day. We could leave that stressful job and keep that crazy relative away from our home. But for many of us, the quality of the air we breathe depends on the quality of the politicians we elect to office.

If increasing our population density leads to increased traffic, we’ll inhale increased amounts of pollutants and contaminants into our lungs. If you drive southbound on the Foothill (2) Freeway into downtown Glendale from the foothills, you’ll often see this dark cloud hovering just below the top floors of the tallest buildings. I think I know where the real source of problem lies — councilmen who don’t give a hoot.