Health ranking is call to action

I am quite aware that every time I write about statistics the news is not good. So as I reviewed Madison County’s health rankings last week I searched for some good news – and I found some: we have very good air quality and good access to health care, healthy foods and recreation.  Now here’s the bad news: we are our own worst enemies.

First, a little about the data and the process, which can be found in detail at

http://www.countyhealthrankings.org/. The County Health Rankings are part of a project between Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute. The rankings focus on factors in four areas that, if improved, can help make communities healthier. Madison County compares favorably in the areas of clinical care and physical environment and unfavorably in health behaviors and social and economic factors.

The project is designed to be a call to action for communities to work together to develop broadbased solutions so that all residents can be healthy.  United Way Worldwide is hosting a series of online conversations to help mobilize around these issues toward United Way’s goal of increasing by one-third the number of youth and adults who are healthy and avoid risky behavior.

There’s no way to soften our ranking of 91 among Indiana’s 92 counties for health behaviors. We smoke too much, eat too much, drink too heavily, drive unsafely, and have high rates of teen births and sexually transmitted diseases. Social and economic factors rank us 73 of the 92 counties with lower high school graduation and post secondary education and higher rates of unemployment, children in poverty, single parent households and adults without social/emotional support.

Based on our overall health factors (84 of 92 counties), we should probably have even worse outcomes than our ranking of 75 would indicate. The credit there belongs to our health care providers and our physical environment, which rank us at 27 and 33 in the state.

Every resident of Madison County can make better choices and support efforts to help others make better choices. Some examples of efforts that are being supported through United Way funding: Second Harvest Food Bank will deliver 570,o0o pounds of fresh produce to Madison County pantries, food programs and tailgate distributions this year; Pendleton Community Library has expanded its community garden program to include Read ‘N Feed, an outreach that plans to bring food and literacy services to 120 households per week; Social Health Agency’s Healthy Choices program provides basic sexuality education, teen pregnancy prevention, and STD education as well as bully prevention to students Anderson Community and South Madison Community School Corporations; recreation programs at YMCA of Madison County in Anderson and Elwood and Alexandria Community Center provide physical exercise to youth as well as adults. 

It is probably no surprise that the county with the number one ranking in the state is Hamilton.  The correlation between income and education, and good health cannot be ignored, but that’s no excuse to make poor choices when better ones are available.