Jefferson County ranks 28th out of 120 Kentucky counties in health outcomes in a recently released report.The report also said Kentucky ranks 37th in health factors. The county ranking was done by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin's Population Health Institute. Researcher Kate Konkle said the purpose of the rankings was to show that "where we live matters to our health." The researchers considered how long people are living and the current state of their health, she said. "We think about those as showing us that it’s not just one single thing that makes us healthy or unhealthy, but it’s a variety of factors, so it includes education, community safety, smoking, housing, diet and exercise, so many individual things that go into making a person healthy, and we look at all of those different factors together, and with that information are able to rank counties against the other counties in their state," Konkle said. Breaking the rankings down further, Jefferson County placed 78th in social and economic factors. “Social and economic factors we know are the areas that have the biggest impact on health, so we really want communities to think about how they can improve education, income, employment, community safety in their community," Konkle said. Education is an area of opportunity for Jefferson County, she said. On the positive side, Jefferson county ranked fifth in clinical care. Konkle said that that category includes access to care and quality of care. Oldham County placed first in the health outcomes and health factors categories. Perry County ranked last in the health outcomes category and Clay County was last in health factors.
