Lake County General Health District is pleased to announce that Lake County is ranked among the healthiest counties for both health outcomes and health factors in the 2023 County Health Rankings, and ranked 16th overall in the State of Ohio. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, in conjunction with the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, released its annual County Health Rankings, a comprehensive annual report that ranks the overall health of nearly every county across all 50 states by way of a standardized methodology to measure health factors and health outcomes. For over a dozen years, report data have shown how a wide range of factors influence how long and how well we live.
This year, the Rankings focus on the connection between civic health and thriving people and places. Civic health reflects the opportunities people have to participate in their communities. Two elements of civic health were examined:
- Civic infrastructure includes spaces, such as schools, parks and libraries that help individuals stay connected, as well as policies and practices that foster belonging, making civic participation possible.
- Civic participation includes the ways people engage in community life to improve conditions and shape the community’s future. This includes political activities, such as voting and advocacy, and community activities, such as volunteering and mentoring.
Health outcomes include length and quality of life measures, and health factors include health behaviors, clinical care, social and economic factors, and physical environment. Lake County dropped slightly in its ranking of 12th in 2022 to 16th in 2023 in Ohio health outcomes, and dropped slightly from 15th in 2022 to 18th in 2023 for health factors. According to County Health Rankings, Lake County ranks better than Ohio county averages and national averages in the following categories: percentage of physical inactivity, access to exercise opportunities, teen births, flu vaccinations, high school completions, individuals who have attended college, children in poverty, income inequality, and air pollution. Lake County has seen improvement in the percentage of residents reporting poor or fair health from 17% in 2022 to 13% in 2023, and also in the average number of days each month with poor physical health from 4.0 days in 2022 to 2.9 in 2023.
Lake County also had some areas that will require additional examination. While Lake County ranks high in the percentage of physical activity and access to exercise opportunities, it is slightly higher than the national average and averages in other Ohio counties for adult obesity. Lake County is also higher than the national average and averages in other Ohio counties in adult smoking, and alcohol-impaired driving deaths. The average number of social associations in Lake County is also slightly lower in comparison with the national average and other Ohio county averages.
LCGHD Health Commissioner Ron H. Graham commented, “We are delighted that Lake County continues to be one of the healthiest counties in Ohio. One challenge with the Rankings is that the criteria for health is often changed, which impacts the score and causes difficulty to compare the data from year-to-year. We are utilizing the most recently available data, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s social vulnerability index, which provides context to health factors and outcomes.”
You can explore the rankings further at https://www.countyhealthrankings.org/ . For more information regarding LCGHD, visit our website at www.lcghd.org.
