Andrew Yang on health: what the evidence says · JRE #1245

What the evidence says 01 / RECORD

Yang claimed about 88% of truckers show an early marker for chronic disease such as substance abuse, diabetes, obesity, or high blood pressure. The most authoritative data on this topic, the CDC/NIOSH National Survey of U.S. Long-Haul Truck Drivers (1,670 drivers surveyed in 2010, published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine in 2014), found individual risk-factor prevalence of 68.9% for obesity, 26.3% for hypertension, and 14.4% for self-reported diabetes, each roughly double the general working population's rate for obesity and smoking. The survey's headline combined statistic was that 61% of long-haul truck drivers reported two or more of six risk factors (hypertension, obesity, smoking, high cholesterol, physical inactivity, and short sleep duration), not 88%. No peer-reviewed or government source located reports an 88% figure for truckers having "an early marker" of chronic disease, whether defined narrowly or broadly (including even one of any risk factor). The 88% figure appears to be a misremembered or inflated version of the 61%-with-two-or-more-risk-factors statistic that is widely cited in trucking health literature and journalism.