Fayette County is considered the healthiest county in Georgia, according to the 2012 County Health Rankings and Roadmaps report for each county in the nation compiled by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute.
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 ranked first out of Georgia’s 159 counties in both the Health Outcomes and Health Factors categories. Aside from the summary scores, none of the sub-category tallies by county were provided in the report.
So how did other Georgia counties fare in the scoring?
Ranked second in the Health Outcomes category was Forsyth County, followed by Oconee, Cherokee, Gwinnett, Cobb, Columbia, Towns, Hall and Morgan.
The second ranked county in Health Factors was Oconee, followed by Forsyth, Columbia, Harris, Cherokee, Cobb, Gwinnett, Towns and Lee.
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 2012 County Health Rankings and Roadmaps report can be viewed at www.countyhealthrankings.org.
