Finney County ranks low in new health rankings

Garden City, KS(westernkansasnews.com) The Kansas Health Institute has released their County Health Rankings for 2018. The rankings used eight different sets of data under two categories to figure the rankings. Health outcomes included length of life and quality of life, while health factors covered health behaviors, clinical care, social & economic factors and physical environment

Finney County ranked 52nd in Health Outcomes and 86 in Health Factors. Finney ranked the highest in length of life, ranking 20th in the state. However Finney ranked in the 80’s in five categories, social & economic factors, clinical care, health behaviors, health factors and quality of life. Finney also ranked 66 in physical environment. According to Institute Dr. Gianfranco Pezzino there were several contributing factors to the numbers.

“Things like smoking, obesity and physical inactivity definitely played a big part in driving down the numbers for Finney County and those are things that probably need to be addressed,” said Pezzino.

Ford County ranked 60 in health outcomes and 82 in health factors. The highest ranking counties in Southwest Kansas for Health Factors were Hodgeman and Gray county ranking 2nd and 7th in the state. In Health Outcomes Scott County ranked 6th and Gray came in at 7th.

For the full list of rankings click here.