MASON CITY – Cerro Gordo county is ranked 80th out of 99 counties in Iowa in overall health, according to a study released by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute.
According to its website, “The County Health Rankings & Roadmaps program helps communities create solutions that make it easier for people to be healthy in their own communities, focusing on specific factors that we known affect health, such as education and income. Having health insurance and quality health care are important to our health, but we need leadership and action beyond health care. Ranking the health of nearly every county in the nation, the County Health Rankings illustrate what we know when it comes to what’s making people sick or healthy. TheCounty Health Roadmaps show what we can do to create healthier places to live, learn, work and play.”
Health outcomes in the County Health Rankings represent how healthy a county is.
“We measure two types of health outcomes: how long people live (mortality) and how healthy people feel while alive (morbidity),” the website explains. Click here to read the data sources.
Cerro Gordo county, according to the study, has higher rates of smoking, obesity and excessive drinking compared to the national average.
Worth county was ranked 5th on the list.
To see all the Iowa counties and how they fared in the study, click here.
