How Healthy Is Your County? Check Out New Rankings on Exercise, Smoking, Poverty, Housing, Obesity

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How healthy is your county?

Find out how your county stacks up in child poverty, college attendance, smoking, physical activity, and preventable hospital says in the new 2014 County Health Rankings, an annual report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute.

The report examined some new categories this year, according to the USA Today:

• Almost one out of five U.S. families live in housing with severe problems, such as overcrowding, insufficient cooking and bathing facilities or costs above 50% of family income.
• About 76% of workers drive to work alone, in part because of limited public transit systems and neighborhoods without sidewalks or safe crosswalks. This contributes to obesity and pollution.
• About 30% of commuters drive more than 30 minutes each way to work — mostly in the East. This contributes to traffic accidents and personal stress.
• About 59 people per 100,000 die from an unintentional or intentional injury each year, but in healthy counties, it shrinks to 49 people, and in about 10% of U.S. counties, it grows to 105 people.
• About 77% of people have access to exercise opportunities, such as a park or recreation center, but in the worst counties, only 19% of people do.

The USA Today report on the health rankings also noted positive changes, including a decrease in smoking and preventable hospitalizations.

However, some rankings haven’t improved or changed:

• Twice as many teens give birth in the least-healthy counties as do in the healthiest counties.
• The percentage of children living in poverty went down in the 1990s but rose from 18% in 2007 to 23% in 2012. Twice as many children live in poverty in the least-healthy counties as in the healthiest counties.
• 16% of adults were considered obese in 1995, and 28% were in 2010.
• Violent crime has decreased by 50% in the past 20 years but has increased in the past two years.
• The premature death rate — or those who die before they turn 75 — is twice as high in the nation’s unhealthiest counties as in its healthiest.

Learn more about the rankings here.