How healthy is your community? A new service from the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the country's largest health care philanthropy, has health snapshots of each county in the country, ranked against the other counties in their state.
Rural counties rank particularly low. Some of the poor rural scores can be attributed to higher disease and death rates in those areas, the authors said during the live Twittercast to release the data. In our home state of Kentucky, rural Wolfe County in Eastern Kentucky ranked last among the 120 counties while Boone County in the greater Cincinnati area ranked first. More important than rankings, which can reflect very small differences, are changes in a county's health status over time. In Kentucky, the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky maintains a Web site, KentuckyHealthFacts.org, that updates information as it becomes available.
Health rankings include a number of factors, including life expectancy, smoking, obesity, binge drinking, access to primary care providers, rates of high school graduation, rates of violent crime, air pollution levels, liquor store density, unemployment rates and number of children living in poverty. "These rankings demonstrate that health happens where we live, learn, work and play. And much of what influences how healthy we are and how long we live happens outside the doctor’s office," Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, president and CEO of the RWJF, said in a news release. "People, no matter where they live, should have the best possible opportunity to be healthy." (See the rankings)
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