The New Health Dialogue

If you've ever wondered about health care and how the social determinants of health play out county to county.. RWJF has a study for you...

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin's Population Health Institute have teamed up to examine the overall health of every county in every state. The County Health Rankings, the first of several county reports, are available here and the slideshow is available here.  The project will be useful for public health and community leaders, policy-makers and consumers who are interested in improving local community health.

The researchers ranked counties according to key factors that affect health outcomes: smoking, obesity (which we wrote about twice this week, here and here), binge drinking, access to PCPs, rates of high school graduation, rates of violence crime, air pollution, liquor store density, unemployment rates and the number of impoverished children.  

They also evaluated the level of overall population health by looking at these indicators: the rate of people dying before the age of 75, the percentage of people reporting fair or poor health, the number of days people reported being in poor physical health, number of days people reported being in poor mental health, and the rate of low-birth rate. 

The researchers then looked at the following four external categories: health behaviors, clinical care, social and economic factors and the physical environment.

"These Rankings demonstrate that health happens where we live, learn work and play. And much of what influences how healthy we are are and how long we live happens outside the doctor's office," says RWJF president and CEO Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, M.D., M.B.A. "People, no matter where they live, should have the best possible opportunity to be healthy."