Metro area counties boast some of Georgia’s healthiest residents while many of their counterparts to the south suffer from higher rates of obesity and other health problems, a new study shows.
Calhoun County residents in southwest Georgia are nearly four times more likely to die prematurely than people in Fayette County -- the state’s healthiest county according to nationwide rankings released Wednesday by the University of Wisconsin and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Fayette has ranked No. 1 two years in a row.
The rankings include a variety of health outcomes and factors such as premature deaths, low birth weights, smoking, unemployment, poverty and number of uninsured adults.
“The health of a community is not simply related to one factor like diabetes or obesity,” said Patrick Remington, associate dean for public health at the University of Wisconsin.
In Calhoun, the least healthy of the 156 Georgia counties included in the ranking, 38 percent of children live in poverty, compared with 7 percent in Fayette. Some 33 percent of adults in Calhoun are obese vs. 25 percent in Fayette, the findings show.
In metro Atlanta, Gwinnett, Cobb, DeKalb and Fulton counties ranked fourth, fifth, 19th and 26th respectively.
Social and economic factors such as education and income play large roles in a community’s overall health, Remington said. The foods that are the least expensive are typically the unhealthiest, he said.
Access to health care is also a problem in many counties, especially in rural areas, said Tim Sweeney, a health care analyst at the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.
To help address Georgia's health problem, state Rep. Mickey Channell, R-Greensboro, is pushing a bill, HB 214, that would create a new Department of Public Health. Overseen by the Department of Human Resources for years, public health now falls under the Department of Community Health umbrella. The bill passed a key Senate committee Monday.
Public health hasn’t worked as well as it could because it has been buried in other agencies, Sweeney said. Adding a separate Cabinet-level post for public health would elevate the issue and garner more attention from lawmakers, he said.
Public health spending will have been cut by nearly 18 percent since 2008 if proposed budget recommendations for 2012 are passed, Sweeney added.
Funding cuts are hurting the public health system in Georgia, which -- along with the Southeast overall -- suffers disproportionately from many chronic diseases compared with the rest of the country, said Michael Eriksen, director of the Institute of Public Health at Georgia State University.
“People take public health for granted,” Eriksen said. “You don’t see what’s being prevented because it never occurs.”
Communities need to broaden the focus beyond chronic diseases such as diabetes to what’s creating the problem, Remington said. “Are there opportunities for people to exercise? Are there sidewalks and are they in good condition?”
Increasing amounts of county-level health data can help local leaders decide where to best invest resources such as in efforts to make communities walkable, he said.
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