DANE COUNTY IS SIXTH HEALTHIEST IN STATE REPORT THE AREA SCORES WELL BECAUSE IT HAS FEWER RISK FACTORS THAN MOST OTHER COUNTIES IN WISCONSIN.(LOCAL/WISCONSIN)

Byline: Patricia Simms Health reporter

Dane County is one of the 10 healthiest counties in Wisconsin, but UW-Madison experts say other counties in the state are working a lot harder to improve.

The Wisconsin Public Health and Health Policy Institute Tuesday released its first "report card" of the 72 Wisconsin counties, with Ozaukee County in first place, Dane County in sixth and Sauk County in eighth for health status.

Dane County also has fewer risk factors than most other Wisconsin counties - ranking fourth best in access to health care, healthy behavior, socioeconomic factors like income and education, and physical environment.

"For both health outcomes and (risk factors), Dane County scores very well, and that's not unexpected given the level of education and income versus the rest of the state," UW-Madison epidemiologist Patrick Remington said Tuesday.

But researchers said Dane and Ozaukee counties didn't improve as much from 1995-2000 as counties like Menominee, the least healthy in Wisconsin, which was second highest in efforts to improve risk factors like income and education.

"There are other counties that maybe are healthy today but because of a changing economy or changing social structure ... just may be going down in health status," said Dr. David Kindig, who co-authored the study with Remington and researcher Paul Peppard.

The authors said positive changes among the poorest counties doesn't mean they'll end up as the best.

"Places that have high mortality rates tend to have a lot of things going against them - they are poorer, with higher rates of divorce, Remington said. "For some counties, it makes health improvement quite a challenge."

UW-Madison cancer researcher David Ahrens said the report highlighted clusters of poor health and good health. "On one hand, it is a report about individual counties, but it's also about how groups of counties ... are doing," Ahrens said. "This clustering is a good mechanism for counties to work together."

Summary health status rankings were based on weighted scores of two components: mortality and general health status.

Mortality is measured as years of potential life lost prior to age 85 years. People who die at a younger age are considered to have lost more "potential " years of life.

* On the Internet: The report is at www.pophealth.wisc.edu/wphi/[sim: cq: ]-NT>

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Source: Wisconsin Public Health and Health Policy Institute

Health in Wisconsin