County Health Rankings: Grading US Counties on Health Status - Essay Sample

Introduction

The county health rankings refer to the grading of counties within each state from the healthiest county to the least healthy county. The county health rankings are based on a model summarizing several health outcomes of each state and the several factors that affect the health status of the popes. Health rankings are done to help in determining the counties and areas that need immediate intervention and the number of funds to be allocated for each least healthy state. County health rankling can help stimulate interest among the government leaders, policymakers as well as the media. The main argument is that health is influenced by how people live, where they live, work or play.

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Description of Health Behaviors in Orange County

The health behaviors of the people of Orange County in California was not as unique as the distribution of the health factors were normal and comparable to many other counties. Orange County ranked number 58 in California (Carpena, Dumith, Loret de Mola & Neiva-Silva, 2019). The four main health behaviors include adult obesity (20%), sexually transmitted infections (404.7) alcohol-impaired driving death (29%) as well as the physical inactivity (16%) and excessive drinking (17%) alcohol-impaired driving death (29%) as well as the physical inactivity (16%) and excessive drinking (17%)

Summary of Findings of Your Local County San Diego

San Diego is characterized by various health outcomes. Some of the key findings include 10 health outcomes length of life 9, quality of life 14, health factors 20, health behaviors 19 clinical care rank 25 and socioeconomic factors number 13 while the physical environment is number 44.

The length of life shows that the years of potential life lost rate or the estimated average years that an individual is likely to live if he or she had not died prematurely is 4,600 and this varied among the blacks, whites and the Hispanics (Remington, Catlin, & Gennuso, 2015). On the other hand, the quality of life was a function of weight factors include life edentates premature adjusted mortality, infant mortality, frequent physical and mental distress, diabetes and HIV prevalence, the sand ego health behaviors included adult smoking, adult obesity, food environments index, physical inactivity, access to exercise opportunities, sexually transmitted diseases, alcohol-impaired driving death as well as teen births. these health behaviors influenced health outcomes

Definition of “Risk Factors” and Examples of Risk Factors for Health Behaviors

Risk facto refers to the favored or exposures that increase an individual's likelihood of incurring an injury one developing a disease. Below is an overview of behavioral risk factors. Adult smoking- the risk factor of adult smoking is a lifestyle and peer pressures. The risk factors for adult obesity include stress and career demands. The risk factors for food environmental index include socioeconomic factors such as incomes and food insecurity (Ryan et al., 2019). Risk factors to physical inactivity incudes career demands, lifestyle changes, and socioeconomic status. Excessive drinking is mainly caused by stress, alcohol tolerances, and peer pressures. Alcohol-impaired driving deaths are mainly attributed to a lack of self-control or overindulgence and lack of proper law enforcement. Sexually transmitted infections are attributed to lack of sex-education and unsafe sex. Finally, the risk factoids for teen births include lack of sex-education, teenage sex, drug and alcohol use, and rape.

Research of Another Source of Data for Health Behaviors

There are several reliable, credible, and current databases. These include government databases (the National Center for Biotechnology Information), non-governmental organization database such as CDC, scholarly journal databases. These databases have a lot of information or articles on health behaviors and risk factors.

References

Remington, L., Catlin, B., & Gennuso, P. (2015). The County Health Rankings: rationale andmethods. Population health metrics, 13, 11. doi:10.1186/s12963-015-0044-2

Carpena, M., Dumith, S., Loret de Mola, C., & Neiva-Silva, L. (2019). Sociodemographic, behavioral, and health-related risk factors for depression among men and women in a southern Brazilian city. Brazilian Journal Of Psychiatry, 21(11). doi: 10.1590/1516-4446-2018-0135

Ryan, M., Olshan, A., Canfield, M., Hoyt, A., Scheuerle, A., & Carmichael, S. et al. (2019). Sociodemographic, health behavioral, and clinical risk factors for anotia/microtia in a population-based case-control study. International Journal Of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology, 122, 18-26. doi: 10.1016/j.ijporl.2019.03.026