Here’s to our health

S. Florida counties are among state’s healthiest.

Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties all ranked among the Top 10 healthiest counties in Florida for the first time in nine years of rankings by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Of the three counties, Miami-Dade made the largest leap in this year’s County Health Rankings report compared with 2017, moving from 23rd to fifth in overall “Health Outcomes.” Broward improved from 19th to 10th, while Palm Beach County remained unchanged at eighth.

The top-ranked county, St. Johns, has topped the ranking since 2012. Union County ranked as least healthy for the second year in a row. The 2018 report, based on 2017 measurements, was released last week.

Reasons for the improvements by Broward and Miami-Dade aren’t spelled out in the report, which assigns rankings in 34 health categories, ranging from the average number of poor mental health days reported by residents to adult smoking rates. Other factors include percentage of underweight births, percentage of adults reporting binge or excessive drinking, availability of physicians and dentists, plus social and economic factors such as unemployment rates, percentage of children in poverty and violent crime rates.

Most of the measurements are factors individuals — rather than the medical industry — are able to control, and the improvements suggest a community actively working to avoid getting sick and going to doctors and hospitals, said Linda Quick, president of the consulting firm Quick Bernstein Connections Group and former president of the South Florida Hospital and Healthcare Association.

“I think, in general, we as a population are caring more about our health and taking more responsibility for maintaining it,” she said.

The rankings are compiled by aggregating direct health measurements, such as adult obesity rates and number of premature deaths, with social and economic indicators, including rates of unemployment and children in singleparent households, that can impact residents’ ability to live healthy lives, according to the study’s authors.

A troubling finding nationally was that the percentage of underweight babies “may be on the rise,” according to the study’s authors. The national average of 8.2 percent of underweight babies was a 2 percent increase from 2014. In Florida, the average was 9 percent statewide and in South Florida’s three counties in 2018. Those percentages haven’t changed in Florida since 2011.

Areas in which all three South Florida counties improved in the 2018 report compared with 2017 include teen birth rates, poor mental health days, percentage without health insurance, unemployment rate, percentage of children in poverty, availability of mental health providers, and an index of factors that contribute to a healthy food environment.