Annual County Health Rankings Released

Annual county health rankings are out for 2016.

Recently, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute released their yearly rankings of counties in states across the country by how healthy they are.

In that study, Stephens County ranked 110th in health outcomes out of 159 counties in the state of Georgia.

That is up from 118th in 2015.

The annual rankings measure health factors like obesity, smoking, unemployment, access to healthy foods, the quality of air and water, income, teen births, and more.

Those factors are then grouped into categories like length of life, quality of life, health behaviors, clinical care, social and economic factors, and physical environment.

Stephens County ranked 138th in Georgia in length of life, 74th in quality of life, 42nd in health behaviors, 15th in clinical care, 38th in social and economic factors, and 65th in physical environment.

That compares to 2015, when Stephens County ranked 122nd in Georgia in length of life, 95th in quality of life, 31st in health behaviors, 41st in clinical care, 38th in social and economic factors, and 102nd in physical environment.

Looking at how other area counties rank statewide in the study, Habersham County ranked 19th in health outcomes in the state, Franklin County ranked 107th, and Banks County ranked 40th in health outcomes.