The University of Wisconsin
Population Health Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation recently
released their annual County Health Rankings and Roadmap. The
annual County Health Rankings measures key factors related to health including:
1.) high school graduation rates
2.) obesity
3.) smoking
4.) unemployment
5.) access to healthy food
6.) income
7.) air and water quality
8.) teen births
Here is a graphic showing how the elements of the data
collected work together to provide a complete picture of health in a given
region of the United States:
The data is then compiled at the
county-level and provides two rankings:
1.) Health outcomes - how healthy a
county is now which is measured by how long people live (mortality) and by how
healthy people feel while they are alive (morbidity).
2.) Health factors - how healthy a
county will be in the future which is measured using health behaviours (i.e.
diet, exercise, alcohol and drug use, sexual activity, tobacco use), access and
quality of clinical care, the physical environment (i.e. water and air quality
and housing and transit) and social and economic factors (i.e. community
safety, employment, education, income and family and social support).
The healthiest counties have:
1.) better health behaviours
including access to healthy foods, parks, gyms and people with enough to eat.
2.) more access to health care
providers.
3.) higher high school graduation
rates and college attendance.
4.) fewer overcrowded households.
The least healthy counties have:
1.) higher rates of unhealthy
behaviours including smoking, obesity, physical inactivity, teen births and
sexually transmitted diseases.
2.) less access to health care
providers.
3.) lower rates of education, higher
rates of poverty, higher rates of unemployment, higher rates of violent crime
and more deaths due to injury.
4.) overcrowded homes with
inadequate facilities for cooking and bathing.
Now let's look at the specific
findings of the study.
Here is a map showing the most (dark
orange) and least (light orange) healthy counties in the United States:
If you want to see how your county scored, the data can be found here.
The least and most healthy counties
for each state in 2014 were:
Health outcomes vary quite widely
when the least healthy ten percent of counties are compared to the most healthy
ten percent of counties. Premature deaths (i.e. before age 75) are twice
as high in the least healthy states as they are in the most healthy states.
In the least healthy states, 22 percent of residents report poor or fair
health compared to only 12 percent in the most healthy states. In the
least healthy states, 4.2 percent of residents report poor mental health days
compared to only 2.8 percent in the most healthy states. What I found
quite interesting was comparing the rate of sexually transmitted diseases and
teen births in both; in the least healthy states, there were 1.5 times as many
cases of sexually transmitted diseases and 2.2 times as many teen births as
there were in the most healthy states.
As shown on this chart, between 1997 and 2010 there has
been a substantial increase in the cost of hospital stays for many common
health conditions that require hospitalization accompanied by an increase in
the number of stays per population for the majority of conditions:
Looking at the data from the
County Health Rankings makes one realize that the health of Americans varies widely and is largely dependent on factors including unhealthily lifestyles and access to adequate health facilities. Obviously, some parts of the United States have a great deal of work ahead of them if they expect both the quantity and quality of their lives to improve.
No comments:
Post a Comment