I was a little shocked when I first started reading about how my study county compared to the rest of the state and the nation in these factors. Just looking at the the scores, Sullivan was 62/62 in NY state in mortality outcomes, 58/62 in morbidity outcome, and 59/62 in social and economic factors. The premature death expressed in years of life lost before age 75 per 100,000 population has been holding relatively steady with maybe a slight increase over the past 10 years at 8761 compared to the state at 5812 and the nation at 5466. The national and state averages have also been decreasing over the past 10 years while there has been no improvement in Sullivan. The vast difference in these numbers is quite alarming and should raise some questions at the county health office. Additionally, Sullivan County performs more poorly on measures of morbidity than the state and nation as well with more physical and mental health days, more complaints of poor or fair health, and lower birth weights. Part of the problem may lay in the social and economic indicators which report lower reported rates of some college, and higher rates of unemployment, children in poverty, and inadequate social support. On the plus side, Sullivan has higher rates of high school graduation than the rest of the state as well as lower rates of violent crime and children in single parent households. Although the latter two measures are much lower than in the nation.
An interesting fact in the health behaviors section is that 30% of adults reported smoking >=100 cigarettes during the year compared to 14% in the nation and 18% in the state. I find this fact quite alarming as well. Undoubtedly this contributes to the early deaths and poor health outcomes as well as more than likely to low birth weights if mothers are smoking while pregnant. With as many people smoking as there are doctors in the county should be encouraging their patients to quit smoking as well as offer ways to help quit. Additionally, the county should be making effort to cut down on smoking through public health measures.
In the clinical care indicators section I found that much like the rest of the nation, Sullivan has a shortage of primary care doctors, altough to a much greater extent. There are 1767 people to 1 doctor in Sullivan County compared with 631:1 in the nation and 781:1 in the state. Clearly this could have an impact on the poor health outcomes Sullivan is experiencing as well. Hopefully some of the changes currently coming about in health care will help to alleviate some of the shortfalls in primary care both in Sullivan County and across the nation.
