LEWISTON – Although Maine was recently ranked the eighth most healthy state in the nation, state health officials are wasting no time setting goals and outlining courses of action to further increase Mainers’ well-being.

Speaking at Thursday’s Great Falls Forum at St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center’s Lepage Conference Center, Maine Bureau of Health Director Dora Anne Mills told the standing-room-only crowd that 10 key health problems still face Maine people.

Consistent with national health experts who have identified obesity as the No. 1 health threat, Mills devoted much time to the problems faced by a fattening population. The Harvard-educated, Farmington native said many diseases such as stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, heart disease and diabetes can be drastically reduced through a combination of smoking cessation, proper eating and exercise.

In Maine alone, obesity rates have risen 64 percent in 10 years, leading one in every five Mainers to be classified as obese.

Mills said the causes of this are obvious: less exercise due to the advent of machines and a fatty diet of highly refined foods. Not without a sense of humor, she used an example from a night at the movies. “I noticed the people walking around with these huge containers of soda and I was astounded,” she said. “So I went up to the person at the counter and asked how many ounces it was. They said ‘oh, well, it doesn’t really matter. You get free refills.'”

From a public health officer’s position, Mills said her office can do things like encourage communities to plan open spaces and safe sidewalks where people can get out and exercise. She also said the state could encourage food vendors to offer healthy alternatives to the more fatty fare. “We built obesity into our society,” she said. “We can build health back.”

On the smoking front, Mills said the state has made considerable progress as of late. She noted a 28 percent reduction in tobacco consumption in the last six years, coupled with a 40 percent drop in teen smoking over the same period.

She credited the improvement to smoking cessation programs paid for with settlement money from tobacco companies, settlement money that ended up having a double benefit: Less smokers can lead to a presumed drop in the number of fatal lung cancer cases, which Mills said kill more Maine women per year than breast cancer. And the settlement money also fostered an expanded health insurance program for children, and expanding health care coverage is another one of Mills’ primary goals.

On other teen health issues, Mills said the state had the third lowest rate of teen pregnancy in the nation, which she said was the result of excellent sexual education programs offered in the schools. However, she also said that one in every 20 Maine high school students has used heroin.

Mills said the strategy for dealing with the problems of alcohol and smoking is to delay the time when kids experiment with these drugs as long as possible. “If we can delay that initial use to the legal age of 21 they have a much lower chance of abuse,” she said.

Other health concerns for Mainers are workplace injuries, where Maine’s average is several times greater than that of the national average, and other injuries involving the elderly and motor vehicle accidents. Mills said a good way to prevent elderly injuries is to simply take a look around the house and remove obvious threats, such as loose power cords and upturned rugs that could cause a life-threatening fall. Her office is also pushing for tougher seat belt laws.