Peoria County's Health Status Remains Average

From Peoria County Government:

Annual Rankings serve as a call to action to improve community health.

Peoria County continues to have moderately healthy residents when compared to the rest of Illinois, according to the annual County Health Rankings released today by the University of Wisconsin, Population Health Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

This is the third year of the Rankings Report which ranks the overall health of nearly every county in all 50 states, using a standard way to measure how healthy people are and how long they live. This year's Rankings includes several new measures, such as how many fast food restaurants are in a county and levels of physical inactivity among residents.

The Rankings also consider factors that affect people's health with four categories: health behavior, critical care, social and economic factors, and physical environment. Among the many health factors they look at: rates of adult smoking, adult obesity, excessive drinking among adults, and teenage births; the number of uninsured under age 65, availability of primary care physicians, and preventable hospital stays; rates of high school graduation, adults who have attended some college, children in poverty; community safety; limited access to healthy foods; rates of physical inactivity; and air pollution levels.

The 2012 County Health Rankings reveals that Peoria County ranked in the middle for overall health (61 out of 102) when compared with other counties in the state. The Rankings provides details how Peoria County ranks on factors that influence its overall health rating. The Report shows that Peoria County has strength in the area of clinical care (5 out of 102 counties.) However, the community is at-risk for poor health when it comes to social and economic factors that affect health where it ranked 82 out of 102 counties. (read more)