Peoria County’s Health Status in Bottom ThirRankings report serves as a call to action to improve community health.

Peoria County falls to the bottom third for healthy residents, when compared to the rest of the counties in Illinois. The annual County Health Rankings, released today by the University of Wisconsin, Population Health Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, provides the details on factors that influence its health rating and why Peoria County ranks 73rd out of 102 Illinois counties in overall health.

The Rankings Report which ranks the overall health of counties in all 50 states to provide a snapshot of how healthy people are and how long they live. Researchers use weighted standard measures and factors to assess the overall health outcomes including health behaviors, social and economic factors, clinical care, and the physical environment.

In reviewing the Rankings report, Monica Hendrickson, Epidemiologist at the Peoria City/County Health Department, states, ” The Rankings report helps counties see what is affecting the health of their residents so they can see where they are doing well, where they need to improve, and what steps they need to take as a community to improve health. Analyzing changes and trends in health factors over a 5-year timeframe suggests we’ve improved in areas such as less adult smoking and more mammography screening.”

Hendrickson adds, “The Rankings report and the 5-year trends reinforce the need to continue to address indentified priority health challenges from our current data such as high rates of obesity, STDs, and teen pregnancy. In addition to health behaviors, the Rankings report adds a perspective to address social and economic factors that affect health such as poor mental health days, children in single-parent families, and violent crime rates. To improve Peoria County’s health status, our whole community will need to address not only the behavioral  and clinical care issues, but also the physical environment and underlying social-economic issues that we now know affects overall health.”

To view the County Health Rankings report, visit the website at www.countyhealthrankings.org. For more information on local public health issues, visit the Peoria City/County Health Department website at www.pcchd.org.