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Milwaukee County's Health Ranking Inches Up, but Not Far

Posted on: Thursday, 16 December 2004, 15:00 CST

Milwaukee County's health ranking inches up, but not far

Although Milwaukee County's health rankings are up from last year, they are still near the bottom compared with the rest of the state.

According to the second annual Wisconsin County Health Rankings, Milwaukee ranks 65th out of 72 counties in health outcomes -- a measure of the current health of residents.

It rated even lower -- 71st -- in a category known as health determinants, which is used to predict how residents' health might improve in the future.

"We found that the health of a community is only partially determined by the level of health care available," said Patrick Remington, an author of the report, referring to health determinants. "In the same way that an individual's health is determined by their genes and psychological and social factors; a community's health is largely determined by socioeconomic factors, health behavior and its physical environment."

This year's rankings are slightly better for Milwaukee County than in 2003, when it was 71st in both categories.

The report, which was released Wednesday and compiled by the Wisconsin Public Health and Health Policy Institute at the University of Wisconsin Medical School, tries to "add value to Wisconsin public health and health policy discussion," its authors say.

Bevan Baker, Milwaukee's health commissioner, said that "while one can debate the data" in the report, there are "certainly no doubts that we do have some gaps" in Milwaukee.

Remington, director of the institute and an author of the report, said comparisons of this year's rankings with 2003's should be made cautiously.

"We've improved our measures of the physical environment," said Remington, by adding new categories, including water- and air- quality measurements.

"We think this measure is getting closer," to the actual risk in the environment, he said. Two new rankings were added to this year's report: health change and disparity.

In order to assess how mortality outcomes had changed for each county during the past decade, researchers looked at mortality rates between 1989 and 1991, and compared that with data gathered between 1999 and 2001.

In Milwaukee, mortality rates dropped during the decade, but only by 5% -- giving it a ranking of 54 out of 72 in terms of improvement.

In contrast, Washburn County showed a 33% decrease in its mortality rate, while Waushara, which bottomed out on the list, had a 21% increase.

The researchers also looked at death disparities within each county -- between people with a high school education or less, and those with more education.

They discovered that in every county, those who were less educated were at least 50% more likely to die before the age of 65 than were their better-educated counterparts. In Milwaukee County, the rate was almost three times as high.

"This is not jaw-dropping data," Baker said. "What is surprising to me is that there has not been any comprehensive action to start to deal" with this information.

"Let's take this data for what it's worth and let's move on it," he said.

Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

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