County Health Rankings Are Out – East Texas Fares Poorly

This year’s County Health Rankings, which size up the relative health of people in more than 3,000 US counties, was released Tuesday. And how do the counties of the Pineywoods stack up? Not good - in fact, every county in Deep East Texas ranked in the bottom 25%, and many of those were among the bottom 10%.   Although each county was only compared to others within the same state, there are some interesting and revealing general findings.

For example, counties with a higher proportion of college-educated residents had a lower number of premature deaths, lower smoking rates, less physical inactivity and obesity and fewer teen births — which didn’t surprise Pat Remington, an associate dean at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health who served as the study’s director.

“High school dropout rates may not be directly related to cancer or heart disease, but they are indirectly related,” he said. “If you have a community with a high number of high school dropouts, with a high unemployment rate and with children living in poverty, you can absolutely predict that poor health outcomes will be coming down the road.”

“[When] you’re unemployed, you’re likely to be without insurance and to have a lot of stress in your life,” he continued. “You often give up hope and that often leads to substance abuse and other self-destructive behaviors. So all these things are part of a web of health.”

Keep in mind, these are the rankings of an area's overall health, this has nothing to do necessarily with the level of health care available in your county.

Out of 221 Texas counties that were given rankings, here's how the Pineywoods placed:

174 - Cherokee

177 - Angelina

184 - Shelby

185 - Nacogdoches

201 - Tyler

202 - Sabine

203 - Jasper

205 - Houston

213 - Newton

214 - San Augustine

217 - Trinity

220 - Polk

Curious about how and why your own county ranks where it does within your state? Check out CountyHealthRankings.org.

[MSNBC]