Monday, March 30, 2015

How Healthy is Schuylkill County Compared to the Rest of Pennsylvania?

How healthy is Schuylkill County compared to the rest of Pennsylvania?


The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute recently posted their 2015 County Health Rankings for Pennsylvania.  Within this report, it ranks each county's health ranking compared to other counties in the State.

According to their online report at www.countyhealthrankings.org, the Rankings help counties understand what influences how healthy residents are and how long they will live. The Rankings are unique in their ability to measure the current overall health of each county in all 50 states. They also look at a variety of measures that affect the future health of communities, such as high school graduation rates, access to healthy foods, rates of smoking, obesity, and teen births. Communities use the Rankings to identify and garner support for local health improvement initiatives among government agencies, healthcare providers, community organizations, business leaders, policy makers, and the public.

So where does Schuylkill County rank? Out of 67 counties in Pennsylvania, #1 being the most healthy and #67 being the least healthy.  Schuylkill County is rank at #55.  Do you agree?  What kind of things do you think the county could do better to better improve our health?

You can review the full report for Pennsylvania at
http://www.countyhealthrankings.org/sites/default/files/state/downloads/CHR2015_PA_0.pdf