The health of La Plata County residents, collectively, isn’t bad, a national survey now in its fourth year, reports.
In fact, the county is the sixth healthiest in Colorado, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found in its survey of states. The leg work is done by the Population Health Institute at the University of Wisconsin.
Ahead of La Plata County are Pitkin, Douglas, Eagle, Summit and Boulder counties in that order from top to bottom. Jackson County is dead last.
The rankings go beyond physical and mental health to paint a quality-of-life portrait.
The Robert Wood Johnson report is prefaced by a caveat to the effect that findings are intended to raise awareness of the multiple factors that affect health, not to pat any single county or counties on the back.
Response has been satisfying, Angela Russell, a researcher at the Population Health Institute said by telephone.
“It’s fantastic because we’re seeing the rankings used as a call to action,” Russell said. “The rankings are a starting point, a point where counties or county equivalents can see where they’re doing well or where they can improve.”
La Plata County public-health leaders, working to improve access to health care and battling obesity – goals they adopted in December – take the ranking in the spirit they were given.
Overall, said Joe Theine, executive director of San Juan Basin Health Department, the rankings show where a county shines and where it can improve. The numbers encourage community dialog on the issues, he said.
Trends are more important than the numbers themselves, Theine said. He cited the 16 percent of La Plata County residents listed as obese in the report.
“The number 16 marks a point in time,” Theine said. “It’s more important to learn what we can do to change it and be healthy.”
The state of a county’s health is based on factors in four areas – behavior (smoking, diet and exercise, alcohol consumption and sexual activity); access to and quality of health care; socio-economic factors (employment, income, family support and community safety); and natural and built environments.
Single factors are weighted, given 4 percent to 10 percent of the total health spectrum.
Jaynee Fontecchio, coordinator of the Citizens Health Advisory Committee (CHAC), said the value of the rankings is reflected in the way the community organizes around them.
Data are useful, but the people who work in a community have insights into what is important locally, Fontecchio said.
“We have to be cautious about the collection and interpretation of data,” Fontecchio said. “We need to be careful before we move.”
Harriet Brandstetter, executive director of the grant-funded and volunteer-staffed La Plata Community Clinic, isn’t into numbers.
“All I know is that people come here because they’re not healthy and don’t have access to health care,” Brandstetter said. “We do the best we can to diagnose and treat them and educate them about preventive medicine.
“We’re trying to build our community by making our patients healthy enough to contribute,” she said.
The clinic, which serves the working poor, opened 3½ months ago and it was in demand immediately, said Brandstetter, a registered nurse who came to Durango from La Clínica de Familia in Las Cruces, N.M., where she was the CEO.
“We opened with one pro bono medical provider and now we have eight,” she said. “They’re all busy, and we have more than 80 people on the waiting list for dental service.”
Jeff Bontrager with the Colorado Health Institute, a nonprofit that does health-policy analysis, heard about challenges and successes when he visited Tuesday with CHAC members.
“Lack of access to affordable dental care and excess and/or binge alcohol consumption are problems,” Bontrager said. “In Colorado in 2011, we found that 39.9 percent of Coloradans lacked dental insurance, compared to 15.8 percent who lacked health insurance.
“But among the positives is the medical center in Cortez that integrates attention to mental and behavioral problems into its health care,” Bontrager said. “Also, outreach that is occurring to identify emotional issues in early childhood to minimize mental-health issues is a plus.”
daler@durangoherald.com
On the Net
Information on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation health rankings is available at www.countyhealthrankings.org/ranking-methods/what-we-rank. La Plata County numbers and the rank of all Colorado counties are found at www.countyhealthrankings.org/app.
