Countdown to the 2011 County Health Rankings

By Patrick Remington, MD, MPH

The 2011 County Health Rankings will be released one week from today, on Wednesday, March 30. These county rankings, now in their second year, are produced by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute in collaboration with and support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

My experience with county health rankings dates back to 2002, when I began working with colleagues here at the University of Wisconsin to develop a model that would broadly assess community health throughout the state. Our approach is unique in that it creates a common yardstick for assessing the overall health of an entire community. Our national County Health Rankings also show how counties within each state compare on many different factors that influence health -- such as high school graduation rates, obesity rates, and the percent of children in poverty.

We were tremendously excited last year to put this information at people’s fingertips with the Rankings’ inaugural release. The sustained volume of traffic to the website lets us know that this type of information is needed and inspires community efforts to improve population health.

When the Rankings are released next week, we expect a flurry of public and media attention as communities around the country go to countyhealthrankings.org to see whether they’re at the top, or at the bottom, or somewhere in between. They’ll be looking for their county’s snapshot, to get a sense of where they’re doing well and where they need to improve. There will be over 150,000 data points reported on the website and we will be encouraging users to dig deep to explore the various measures. But the Rankings are much more than a fancy compilation of data; they carry a broader meaning and message that transcends these rankings.

So what do the Rankings tell us?

They tell us that improvement is necessary -- and possible -- regardless of rank. They tell us that where we live, learn, work and play matters to our health. Health care is vital for healthy populations, but it is only part of the story. We must find ways to create places, policies, programs, and social structures that promote health across the lifespan, especially for those members of our communities who have the fewest resources and options.

And the Rankings tell us that health is everyone’s business. Dramatic population health improvement will not occur using only a service-delivery paradigm. We can’t relegate the creation of healthy communities to certain professions or organizations. This work doesn’t require particular offices, buildings, titles, or credentials – it asks knowledge of one’s community, understanding of what works and what doesn’t, creativity, commitment, and patience.

Think of the 2011 County Health Rankings as a call to action for each one of us, living in one of the counties across the country. We’re looking forward to hearing your voices and mobilizing action toward community health!

Patrick Remington, MD, MPH is Associate Dean for Public Health and Professor of Population Health Sciences at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.