By JAN LARSON McLAUGHLIN
BG Independent News
The good news is Wood County’s health ranking is 8 among Ohio’s 88 counties. But the bad news is Ohio’s ranking is 46 out of the 50 states.
That means Ohioans as a whole are living less healthy lives and spending more on health care than people in most other states.
The Health Value Dashboard examines each state’s health outcomes, spending, change over time, and inequities.
Ohio’s challenges include high numbers of adults smoking, drug overdose deaths, infant mortality, food insecurity and average monthly marketplace premiums.
Ohio’s strengths include fewer adults without health care because of cost, fewer heart failure readmissions, less youth tobacco and marijuana use, and lower unemployment rate.
The health rankings, by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, look at individual counties. The following factors were noted for Wood County:
- Ranks 5th in Ohio for length of life.
- Ranks 11th in Ohio for quality of life.
- Ranks 8th for health behaviors such as smoking, obesity, physical inactivity, access to exercise opportunities, excessive drinking, alcohol-impaired driving deaths, sexually transmitted infections and teen births.
- Ranks 62nd for physical environment, with the primary factor being drinking water violations.
- Ranks 21st for clinical care. While the number of uninsured citizens in Wood County is lower than Ohio’s average, the number of preventable hospital stays is greater.
- Wood County has fewer primary care physicians and mental health providers per person than most Ohio counties. Most notable is the number of dentists, with the state averaging one for every 1,690 citizens, but Wood County having one for every 2,880 residents.
- Ranks 9th for social and economic factors, such as high school graduation rates, some college, unemployment, children in poverty, income inequality, children in single-parent households, violent crimes and injury deaths.
Other neighboring counties were ranked as follows: Lucas County, 69; Henry County, 11; Hancock County, 14; Sandusky County, 33; and Seneca County, 53.
Improvements for Wood County were seen in the length of life category, and the clinical care category. However, Wood County remains lower in the ranking for dental care availability.
“That confirms our long held belief that we are lacking dental care in Wood County,” said Wood County Health Commissioner Ben Batey. The county health district is in the process of building a dental clinic attached to the existing county health clinic.
Wood County also saw a drop in its ranking for “physical factors” from number 45 to 62 in the state. That category looks at such factors as how many people have long drives to work, and how many drive alone to work. That is a factor that Wood County is unlikely to overcome since it covers such a large geographic area and has no countywide public transportation system.
“That’s the hardest one for us to have an impact on,” Batey said. “Sometimes there are things out of our control.”
Batey said the health district uses the county health rankings to determine items that need more work.
“How are we doing compared to counties around us, with Ohio, and the nation as a whole?”
While Wood County’s 8th place ranking in the state is good, there is more work to be done.
“We don’t want to rest on that,” Batey said. “We still lag far behind the nation. They’re doing something we’re not doing, because they are getting better rankings.”
In Ohio, the counties ranking ahead of Wood are Delaware, Geauga, Putnam, Union, Medina, Warren and Holmes.
“Our vision is to be the healthiest county in Ohio,” Batey said, noting that rankings like this help identify areas that need attention. “How can we move ourselves in the right direction.”
The state rankings identify trends that worsened in each state. For Ohio that included drug overdose deaths, child immunization rates, and average monthly premiums.
Improvements in Ohio included the number of children exposed to secondhand smoke, fewer people who were unable to see doctors due to costs, youth tobacco and marijuana use, stroke care, and unemployment.
