Franklin County ranks 36th in health study

Franklin County dropped a little in the annual County Health Rankings released by the University of Wisconsin and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

           

Franklin County ranks 36th out of Florida’s 67 counties for the overall health of its residents.

Last year our county ranked 33^rd – but the year before that we were 40th.

The group looked at more than 3,000 counties and the District of Columbia to assess 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.

The Rankings consider factors that affect people’s health within four categories: health behavior, clinical care, social and economic factors, and physical environment.

Surprisingly, Franklin County was weakest when looking at our physical environment where we ranked 64^th.

That includes air pollution, drinking water violations and severe housing problems – last year Franklin county ranked 25^th in that category.

We also ranked pretty low when it comes to clinical care which includes access to doctors and dentists and taking advantage of things like diabetes screenings and mammography when they are available.

Franklin county ranked 51^st on Social and Economic factors like education, unemployment, children in poverty and violent crime.

We ranked 38^th in quality of life and 34^th in length of life.

Franklin County’s health ranking was very similar to neighboring counties.

Liberty County ranked 32^nd out of Florida’s 67 counties, Gulf County was 34th and Wakulla 29th.

The purpose of the study, which is now in its fifth year, is to give political leaders and medical professionals a benchmark to work from when considering ways to make residents overall health better.

You can see Franklin County’s numbers and compare them to any other county in the state by going on-line to countyhealthrankings.org

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