ABOUT THE STUDY

The University of Wisconsin’s School of Medicine and Health ranked all 67 of Pennsylvania’s counties according to health.

The study used two measures: health outcomes and health factors.

Health outcomes include length and quality of life. The quality of life includes poor or fair health, poor physical days, poor mental health days and low birth weight.

Health factors include health behaviors - smoking, obesity, food, environment, physical inactivity, access to exercise opportunities, excessive drinking, alcohol-impaired driving deaths, sexually transmitted infections and teen births.

Health factors also include clinical care - uninsured, access to primary care physicians, dentists and mental health providers, hospital stays, diabetic monitoring and mammography screening.

It also includes social and economic factors - high school graduation, some college, unemployment, children in poverty, income inequality, single-parent households, social associations, violent crime and injury/deaths.

Health factors also include the physical environment - air pollution, drinking water violations, severe housing problems, driving alone to work instead of carpooling or using public transportation and long commutes.

The data for each category was compiled from various years.

For example, the premature deaths were counted between 2010 and 2012. The numbers of uninsured were measured in 2012; the number of people in fair to poor health, low birth weights, and poor mental or physical health days were measured between 2006 and 2012. The ratio of population to dentists was measured in 2013.