New Study Ranks Fayette as Georgia’s Healthiest County

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Fayette is the healthiest county in Georgia according a new report released this week by the the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin. Calhoun County in Southwest Georgia is the state’s least healthy. According to the rankings, residents in Calhoun County are four times more likely to die prematurely than those in Fayette County.

“And that means people are dying earlier than they need to be,” said Bridget Booske, the study’s deputy director, in a WABE news story. “Most deaths that occur before age 75 are actually preventable. Not all of them, but a large percentage of them are.”

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation published its county health rankings this week to serve as a call to action for communities to:

  • understand the health problems in their community,
  • get more people involved in improving the health of communities, and
  • recognize that factors outside medical care influence health.

The County Health Rankings show us that where we live matters to our health. The health of a community depends on a variety of factors that range from health behaviors, education, and jobs, to quality of health care, to the environment.

Counties that rank in the top ten for health outcomes:

  • Fayette
  • Oconee
  • Forsythe
  • Gwinnett
  • Cobb
  • Cherokee
  • Chattahoochee
  • Columbia
  • Morgan
  • Hall

Counties in the bottom ten:

  • Calhoun
  • Talbot
  • Quitman
  • Stewart
  • Randolph
  • Terrell
  • Marion
  • Crisp
  • Burke
  • Bacon

Rankings are based on a model of population health that emphasizes the many factors that, if improved, can help make communities healthier places to live, learn, work and play. By ranking the health of counties using not only traditional health outcomes, but also the broad range of health factors, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation hopes to mobilize action on the part of governmental public health and in other sectors that can influence, and are affected by, health.

Go to Georgia’s 2011 county health rankings.


Contact:
William Valladares
GaFCP Communications Manager
404-527-7394 (x114)
william@gafcp.org