The 2015 County Health Rankings and Roadmaps report for each county in the nation compiled by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute has been released and Fayette County was determined to be the third healthiest county in Georgia.
The score is down two notches from 2012 when Fayette County was ranked as the state’s healthiest county.
The report used a number of factors to generate findings in the Health Outcomes and Health Factors categories. Health Outcomes represented how healthy a county is while Health Factors represented the variables that influence the health of a county.
Fayette County in the overall scoring for 2015 ranked 3rd out of Georgia’s 159 counties in the Health Outcomes category and 2nd in the Health Factors category.
So how did other Georgia counties fare in the scoring?
Scoring in the top 10 healthiest county in overall ranking was Forsyth County, followed by Gwinnett, Fayette, Cobb, Oconee, Cherokee, Columbia, Harris, Coweta and Lumpkin counties.
The Health Outcomes category gave equal weighting to the length of life and quality of life in areas such as premature death, poor or fair health, poor physical health days, poor mental health days and low birth weight.
Health Factors were determined by weighted scores that included in health behaviors at 30 percent, clinical care at 20 percent, social and economic factors at 40 percent and environmental quality factors at 10 percent.
Sub-groupings in health behaviors included tobacco use, diet and exercise, alcohol use and sexual activity. The clinic care sub-group included access to care and quality of care. The social and economic factors sub-group included, education, employment, income, family and social support and community safety. And the physical environment sub-group included environmental air quality, access to recreational facilities, fast food restaurants and limited access to healthy foods at 10 percent.
The study results from the sub-groups in both categories relied on a variety of public and private national data tracking organizations.
The 2015 County Health Rankings and Roadmaps report can be viewed at www.countyhealthrankings.org.
