Frederick - A Healthy County

By Lena H. Sun, Washington Post staff writer:

Fairfax, Arlington and Loudon are the healthiest counties in Virginia, and Howard, Montgomery and Frederick top the list in Maryland, according to a set of reports recently released. The reports rank U.S. counties and cities based on how long people live and how healthy they are. The three Northern Virginia counties get top marks within the state for overall health, but they compare poorly with other parts of Virginia for air quality. Fairfax ranked 132 -- last among Virginia's counties and cities included in the study -- in that category because of the region's horrendous traffic. Fairfax had 37 unhealthy air quality days in 2005; rural counties such as Craig and Cumberland had none.

In Maryland, Prince George's County ranked 17 out of the state's 23 counties and Baltimore City for overall health, in large part because the rate of people dying before age 75, which is more than twice that of Howard County. The County Health Rankings (available at http://www.countyhealthrankings.org/) are the first reports to rank the overall health of almost every county in all 50 states. The District was not included.

The health rankings were done by the University of Wisconsin's Population Health Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Researchers rated overall health based on five measures that included the rate of people dying before age 75; the percentage of people who reported being in fair or poor health; and the rate of low-birth-weight infants. They also gave a separate grade to factors that influence health. Those include: smoking, obesity, binge drinking, access to primary care providers, high school graduation rates, violent crime rates, air pollution levels and liquor store density. Researchers relied on federal health, census and crime data compiled from 2002 to 2008.

Counties and cities are ranked within each state; there is no overall score for which county is the healthiest in the nation. Researchers said they hope public health officials, community leaders and consumers compare their county with others in the state and find ways for improvement. "Rather than pointing the finger at the least healthy places in the country, which tend to be in the Southeast and Appalachia, this is a Polaroid snapshot that allows every state to look within their own boundaries, down to the county level," said Patrick Remington, associate dean for public health at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

"People tend to rank health based on life expectancy," said Jim Marks, a senior vice president at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. "But so many things that are important for health are outside the responsibilities of the doctors and hospitals we traditionally think of as public health."

Community interest could increase pressure for change. "When people move to a neighborhood, they want to know how good are the schools and expect to get some answer," Marks said. "They almost never ask how healthy is this a place to live and raise a family." It's also to an employer's advantage, he said, to draw from a healthier population so health insurance costs are less.