Last week, The Robert Wood Johnson foundation released its annual County Health Rankings for 2023. The map above shows the heath outcomes ranking for each county in Pennsylvania. Lower ranked counties are colored dark green. The health outcomes ranking is a composite of length of life and quality of life measures. Above, we see that 10 of the 17 lowest ranked counties are in the western half of the state.
Cambria County
For me the overall rankings are not as interesting as the individual statistics used to determine them. For simplicity, this post will focus on Cambria County’s statistics. The county ranked 64th out of 67 counties in health outcomes, down one spot from last year. The county ranked 63rd out of 67 on both length of life and quality of life measures. Philadelphia County ranked dead last on both measures.
The length of life ranking is determined by age adjusted years of potential life lost (YPLL). YPLL is a measure of premature mortality before age 75. If someone dies at age 25, then they have 50 YPLL’s. Cambria County had an average of 9600 YPLL’s for the years 2018-2020. By comparison, Pennsylvania had 7,600 and the U.S. had 7,300 for this period.
| Leading Causes of Death Under Age 75 | Deaths | Age-Adjusted Rate per 100,000 |
| Malignant neoplasms | 568 | 95 |
| Diseases of heart | 424 | 72.9 |
| Accidents | 295 | 86.9 |
| Chronic lower respiratory diseases | 113 | 17.1 |
| COVID-19 | 70 | 10.9 |
In Cambria County, African Americans had an average of 20,900 YPLLs while Caucasians had an average of 9,200 over the same period. The top five causes of death for 2018-2020 were malignant neoplasms (cancer), heart disease, accidents, chronic lower respiratory diseases and COVID-19. Comparatively, that COVID made the top five is striking as the spike in COVID deaths in the county came at the tail end of 2020. Subsequent rankings should show an even higher COVID mortality rate for the county because there was another spike in deaths in the 2021-2022 winter.
Correspondingly, there are over 60 statistics used in the 2023 County Health Rankings. Accordingly, it will take time to sift through this morass. You will see that the devil is always in the details. Certainly, there will be some more meaningful patterns for decision makers.