Starke County Sees Slight Improvements in Annual Health Rankings

Posted on March 30, 2017
Author Michael Gallenberger, WKVI

Starke County has moved up slightly in annual health rankings, but it’s still toward the bottom. The County Health Rankings, which are put together each year by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin’s Population Health Institute, were released Wednesday.

They show that Starke County ranks 86th of Indiana’s 92 counties when it comes to health outcomes, like length and quality of life. That’s four places better than last year. But when it comes to health factors, which include everything from health behaviors and education levels, to air quality and access to health care, Starke County remains in 87th place.

Moving Starke County Forward was formed in 2012 to improve those rankings. Board member Jordan Morris says the group continues to make an impact, little by little. “We may not jump 40 rankings because there are also other counties that are working hard to improve health in their area,” she says. “But I think Starke County has done an excellent job, especially at collaborating and coming together, all of the different agencies joining together to impact this issue. It’s been really good here to see that.”

She points out that a few areas have seen some major improvements since Moving Starke County Forward began. “The first one being the high school graduation rate – that has improved significantly,” she says. “Back in 2011, it was 70 percent, and now we’re at 91 percent. And then also when it comes to education, the amount of individuals living in Starke County with some college has increased from 40 percent to 51 percent. The unemployment rate has significantly decreased.”

But many challenges remain. “The adult obesity rate – back in 2011, it was 30 percent, and now it’s up to 36 percent,” she says. “So that has worsened. And then we noticed that children in single-parent households, they have that impacting social and economic factor, and we do have more children this year, as opposed to 2011 that are living in single-parent households.” When it comes to clinical care, which includes access to physicians, dentists, and mental health providers, as well as the percentage of uninsured residents, Starke County ranked 90th.

As for why Starke County overall ranks far below some of its neighbors, like Pulaski and Marshall counties, Morris says the county’s premature death rate has a big impact. “That’s an area that we’ve looked at, and we’ve pulled local data,” she explains. “We’ve worked closely with the Starke County Health Department, and we’ve looked at what could be impacting the premature death rate. One of the areas that we thought would be interesting to pull is data from drug overdose deaths and looking at the ages where people are overdosing and dying.”

She says increased access to opioid antidote Narcan is making a big difference, but the changes are not reflected yet in the County Health Rankings.