Kenosha News

County continues to score poorly in state health rankings

Kenosha County continues to score dismally in a statewide ranking of health outcomes and factors.

An annual report from the UW Population Health Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, issued this week, placed Kenosha 60th out of the state’s 72 counties in health outcomes and 63rd in the factors that cause them.

Those rankings are virtually unchanged over the last several years.

“You’re not going to see much change in a year,” said Gary Brown, executive director of Kenosha Area Family and Aging Services Inc. “We still have a lot of smokers; we have some of the worst air in Wisconsin.”

Among the lowlights of the county’s latest results:

— A 59th-place ranking in health behaviors such as smoking, obesity and binge drinking.

— A second-to-last ranking on physical environment measures, including air quality, access to healthy foods and density of liquor stores.

— A 64th-place ranking in morbidity, corresponding to measures of the rates of those in poor or fair health, low birth weights and poor physical and mental health days, as determined through telephone surveys.

Kenosha County ranked slightly better, 53rd, in the clinical care classification. The 9 percent rate of uninsured adults here is one point lower than the statewide rate, though the rate of preventable hospital stays for Medicare patients in Kenosha was among the state’s highest, at 86 per 1,000 enrollees.

The county ranked 42nd in social and economic factors, such as high school and college graduation rates, unemployment and poverty. Violent crimes occurred at a rate of 231 per 100,000 residents in Kenosha County, compared with 272 statewide.

Ozaukee County, just north of Milwaukee, was considered the state’s healthiest county in the overall rankings. Milwaukee and Menominee counties were at the bottom of the list.

Personal, community solutions

Kenosha County Nursing Director Cynthia Johnson said some of the county’s shortcomings are tough to overcome.

“Place does matter; that’s a big part of it,” Johnson said. “With our position in this state, with our air quality, we do not have control over pollution from Illinois and Indiana and where the winds come from,” she said.

Others — such as tobacco use, obesity and unsafe sex — speak to a personal responsibility to improve one’s health, Johnson said.

Community-based steps like the July implementation of Wisconsin’s smoke-free workplace law and the county’s budding effort to generate a countywide bike route plan also can help to improve the county’s health, she added.

Johnson said the county is working on various programs to improve outcomes, but results take time.

A prenatal care coordination initiative in the Division of Health, a safe-sleep program that provides portable cribs to parents who cannot afford them and last year’s hiring of a Medicaid “navigator” to improve patients’ access to care were among the ongoing efforts Johnson cited.

Johnson said a Healthy Wisconsin Partnership grant coming on board this spring will provide $200,000 to develop a strategic plan to address infant mortality rates — one of the county’s notable shortcomings — with opportunities for funding renewals over the next five years.

“These rankings,” Johnson said, “they give us a snapshot of the health in our community, so we can understand our health problems and what we can do to improve.”