[StBernard] In-state health rankings: St. Tammany first, Orleans and St. Bernard near last

[Westley Annis]

In-state health rankings: St. Tammany first, Orleans and St. Bernard near
last

Published: Thursday, April 12, 2012, 12:25 PM     Updated: Thursday, April
12, 2012, 1:25 PM

 By Katy Reckdahl, The Times-Picayune 

When the annual County Health Rankings were released last week, it was no
real surprise that relatively well off St. Tammany Parish ranked the most
healthy while direly poor East Carroll Parish ranked worst in the state.

Basically, where you make your home influences how healthy you are.
According to Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, president of the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation, the health-care nonprofit that issues the yearly rankings along
with the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, the idea is
that where people live plays "a big role in determining how health we are
and how long we live."

Despite a bottom-tier ranking overall, Orleans Parish ranked high in its
ratio of primary-care physicians to patients: 526 to 1, lower than even the
national benchmark of 631 to 1. Even St. Tammany had more residents per
physician, at 876. And Plaquemines and St. Bernard had far fewer
primary-care doctors, with 4,185 St. Bernard residents per doctor and 3,020
Plaquemines residents per doctor.

Residents of many Louisiana parishes were not in great health. The data
showed high rates of poor health and premature death. Large portions of
uninsured and children who live in poverty. High rates of physical
inactivity coupled with limited access to healthy food, which combine to
create another poor-health marker, adult obesity.

Louisiana has long ago conceded that it will never top national health
studies. The state's own Department of Health and Hospitals wrote in a
recent annual report that "it is important to note that Louisiana
consistently ranks near or at the bottom of most measures of public health."
The report notes in particular the state's high level of persistent poverty.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture defines 24 of Louisiana's 64 parishes as
"persistent poverty parishes," because at least 20 percent of the population
has lived below the federal poverty line for three or more decades.

So the parish-by-parish data charts for Louisiana are swimming with numbers
that look pretty bad, especially in the areas that rank the worst, mostly
clustered along the Mississippi-Louisiana border.

In the metro area, Orleans and St. Bernard ranked the worst, with Orleans
earning the 60th spot out of 64 parishes and St. Bernard even further near
the bottom, at 62. Jefferson was farther near the top, at 14, as were St.
Charles, at 4, and Plaquemines, at 12. The others fell in near the middle,
with St. James at 22 and St. John the Baptist at 28.

Even in a Louisiana-only comparison, Orleans' rates of sexually transmitted
disease look epidemic at a rate that's 13 times the national benchmark and
double the rate of Louisiana as a state. As officials have noted in recent
months, another public-health crisis in New Orleans is its violent-crime
rate, which also stands at epidemic levels, 14 times the national rate.

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