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Florida health report: County-by-county ratings - OrlandoSentinel.com
By Fernando Quintero, Orlando Sentinel
February 17, 2010
If you want to live longer, Seminole County is the place to be. If you want to avoid bad air quality and unhealthy food, stay away from Orange County.
A first-of-its-kind report released today by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute ranks the health of Florida's 67 counties. It provided the same breakdown for all 50 states. The study provides a snapshot of how healthy a county's residents are by comparing their overall health that of people in other counties in their state.
The 2010 County Health Rankings report looks at a number of factors that influence residents' health, including premature death, air quality and access to healthy foods as well as tobacco use, binge drinking and community safety.
"The rankings are a way for public-health and community leaders to measure the health of their county so they can see how well they are doing and where they need to improve," said Pat Remington, an associate dean at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and the report's lead organizer.
The data used in today's report ? which builds on a county-by-county ranking that has been conducted in Wisconsin for the past six years ? includes survey data calculated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, data from the U.S. Census, birth and death records, rates of sexually transmitted diseases and Medicare-claims data.
"This report shows that a lot of factors are correlated with one another," said University of Central Florida economist Sean Snaith. "If you want to improve a community's health, you have to look at a lot of specific components. Look at education, income, employment, problems linked to teen births. And then you have policy aimed at those specific components."
By Fernando Quintero, Orlando Sentinel
February 17, 2010
If you want to live longer, Seminole County is the place to be. If you want to avoid bad air quality and unhealthy food, stay away from Orange County.
A first-of-its-kind report released today by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute ranks the health of Florida's 67 counties. It provided the same breakdown for all 50 states. The study provides a snapshot of how healthy a county's residents are by comparing their overall health that of people in other counties in their state.
The 2010 County Health Rankings report looks at a number of factors that influence residents' health, including premature death, air quality and access to healthy foods as well as tobacco use, binge drinking and community safety.
"The rankings are a way for public-health and community leaders to measure the health of their county so they can see how well they are doing and where they need to improve," said Pat Remington, an associate dean at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and the report's lead organizer.
The data used in today's report ? which builds on a county-by-county ranking that has been conducted in Wisconsin for the past six years ? includes survey data calculated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, data from the U.S. Census, birth and death records, rates of sexually transmitted diseases and Medicare-claims data.
"This report shows that a lot of factors are correlated with one another," said University of Central Florida economist Sean Snaith. "If you want to improve a community's health, you have to look at a lot of specific components. Look at education, income, employment, problems linked to teen births. And then you have policy aimed at those specific components."
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