The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

DAYTON – Columbia County jumped from 24th in state health rankings to 12th between last year’s assessment and now, Public Health Director Martha Lanman reported to county commissioners last week.

The county’s biggest improvements were in access to exercise opportunities, mental health providers and diabetic monitoring, according to the report provided by County Health Rankings – many of these were community health areas targeted by local wellness programs in the last year.

“It shows that all the work we’ve done in this community has really made a difference,” Lanman said. “Everyone with the Columbia County Wellness Project, Columbia Cares, Public Health and the Coalition for Youth and Families, they’ve all worked together to improve the health of this county’s population.”

Between 2014 and 2015, the number of people in the county with access to exercise opportunities increased 23 percent – from 43 percent of the population to 66 percent. The county is still lagging behind the state average, at 89 percent, but the boost means good things for the community.

“For more people to have access to exercise opportunities really benefits everybody,” Lanman said. Many organizations, from the Senior Center to Columbia Cares and Dayton General Hospital, have worked to provide fitness programs in the county.

The ratio of mental health providers improved as well, from 666 people for every one provider in 2014 to 576 for every one in this year’s data. And diabetic monitoring, a focus of the new Patient-Centered Medical Home program through the Columbia County Health System, is at 87 percent of the population, higher than the state average of 86 percent.

One of the most influential factors between last year’s measurement and this year’s, however, was the inclusion of the quality of life indicator “low birthweight,” Lanman said. Last year this data was not included in our ranking; this year it was, and Columbia County’s score (3.8 percent of babies having low birthweight) is better than the state average (6.3 percent of babies having low birthweight).

“I don’t know why this data wasn’t included in last year’s measurement, but at the end of the day we’re lower than the Washington average by a significant amount and therefore our ranking went up,” Lanman said.

The County Health Rankings is a collaboration between the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute and measures the health of nearly all counties in the nation and ranks them within the state.

Data is collected from a variety of national data sources such as the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, U.S. Department of Agriculture, FBI Uniform Crime Reporting, Safe Drinking Water Information System, Fatality Analysis Reporting System, U. S. Census and others.

More information on the rankings, past reports and details on the collection and analysis of data can be found at http://www.countyhealthrankings.org.