Clark County's Health Rankings, Part 1
Thursday, March 31st, 2016 -- 12:54 PM
-A new county health rankings report was recently released by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.All though there are clear opportunities for improvement, Clark County has assets and resources that can help it strive to be a healthier county. I spoke with the Director of the Clark County Health Department, Bob Leischow, and he explained the county’s score overall.
"Clark County ranked 44 of 72 counties in Health Outcomes, which is a reflection of five primary measures to assess the level of overall health or "health outcomes" for each county. These measures include the rate of people dying before the age of 75, the percent of people who report being in fair or poor health, the number of days people report being in poor physical or mental health and the rate of low birth weight in infants."
"It is important to know that these rankings only serve as indicators based on data that is 2-3, sometimes 4 years old, so it's not "real time" data. However, it is important to note that these indicators are used along with other data sources to look at trends and where we might need to give more focus and allocate resources"
"Furthermore, the yearly adjustments in the rankings are also a reflection of counties that may have experienced greater improvement in certain areas when compared to other counties, so it's not always a situation that a county is necessarily doing worse, per se, but rather may be seeing improvement more quickly."
Bob also stated that the rankings do come with limitations including the fact that many of the indicators used in regard to reported quality of life cannot be compared to previous years due to changes in survey methodology.
Coming up on Friday, we’ll hear about some other factors in the survey and what Clark County scored.
Feel free to contact us with questions and/or comments.