How Healthy Are Our Connecticut Counties? How Do the Everyday Decisions We Make about Food and Exercise Affect Our Health Overall? The County Calculator Can Tell Us

How do the decisions we make outside the doctor’s office–in our schools, workplaces and neighborhoods influence our health and well-being on a daily basis? What role do Education and Income play in health care outcomes? Do these factors have any measurable impact on our health overall?  In the short-term and the long-term?  How much do the everyday decisions we make about what we eat and where we buy our foods  affect what happens to us years from now? 

You can find the answers in the 2012 County Health Rankings. The Rankings is an annual check-up that highlights the healthiest—and the least healthy—counties in America.

Published by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute and RWJF, the Rankings assess the overall health of nearly every county in all 50 states based on key factors that influence health, such as education rates, income levels, and access to healthy foods and medical care. This year’s Rankings include several new measures, such as how many fast-food restaurants are in a county, and levels of physical inactivity among residents.

Also new this year, the County Health Road-maps will help counties to mobilize and take action to create healthier places to live, learn, work, and play.  The 2012 County Health Calculator, an interactive app developed by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Virginia Commonwealth University’s Center on Human Needs, uses education and income to illustrate how these factors outside the health care system may affect our health.

The links below are all active; put the cursor over the entry you wish to read more about and follow the prompts.  The County Health Calculator is extremely informative.  Here are some short-hand facts about New Haven County:

In New Haven County, Connecticut, if 5% more people attended some college and 3% more had an income higher than twice the federal poverty level we could expect to save 189 lives, prevent 2,700 cases of diabetes, and eliminate $21.1 Million in diabetes costs every year.  Learn much more by using the calculator and the other links for yourself.  (N’Zinga Shani, OneWorld, Inc)

Learn how your county ranks and watch videos about efforts to improve health in San Bernardino, Calif., and Hernando, Miss.

• State Medicaid Leaders Spur Health Care Innovation

• Physicians and Hospitals Bump Up HIT Use

• Reducing Just 64 Calories a Day Could Help Meet Childhood Obesity-Prevention Goals

• IOM Panel Urges Increased National Focus on Prevention, Public Health

• Expanding “Hot Spotting” to New Communities

• Can a Healthy Recess Prevent Bullying and Increase Time for Learning?  

  This is very valuable information; we at OneWorld encourage you to use the calculator in evaluating where you live.  It is easy, straightforward and most informative.  The information is provided courtesy of Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.  There is also additional related information at:  http://humanneeds.vcu.edu/ Virginia Center for Human Needs .  The Center is in partnership with the RWJF. Other related information are linked below.

• Public Health Program Area

• County Health Rankings & Roadmaps Focus Area

• County Health Rankings on newpublichealth.org

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 1st, 2012 at 4:05 pm and is filed under Announcements, Civic Engagement, Community Education & Information, Education, Health, Public Good, Uncategorized, Web Resources. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.