Rankings were determined using five factors — the rate of people dying before age 75, the percentage of people who report being in fair or poor health, the numbers of days people report being in poor physical and poor mental health, and the rate of low birth weight infants.
Subsets of those areas included smoking, obesity, teen pregnancy, preventable hospital stays, rate of high school graduates, children in poverty and violence.
Delaware County ranked the most healthy. Lawrence County ranked the least healthy.
The issues brought out by the study did not surprise health officials who already manage programs addressing issues such as infant morality and smoking, said Health Commissioner Charles Patterson. The ranking, however, was a surprise, he said.
“I’ve lived in Clark County most of my life and I was a little bit hurt by the rankings,” Patterson said. “Even if I wasn’t the health commissioner I’d want my community to be better than the bottom fourth.”
The health district will use the study, as well as other more recent studies it has done, as it prioritizes its programming, but there’s only so much health officials can do, he said.
“Citizens need to know we can make a difference as an individual in the health decisions we make,” he said. “It’s not the hospital that is going to fix the problem; it’s not the health district that’s going to fix the problem.
“It’s going to be each of us as individuals.”
To view the full report visit CountyHealthRankings.org.
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