Study ranks Clark 6th healthiest county in Nevada

Clark County’s population-to-primary care physician ratio helps explain why some Southern Nevadans can wait weeks to see a doctor, according to a study released Tuesday.

Here, that ratio is 1,829-1, according to the 2015 County Health Rankings released Tuesday by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute.

The rankings — which allow each state to see how its counties compare on 30 factors that affect health, including education, transportation, housing, violent crime, jobs, diet and exercise — offer a snapshot of nearly every county in the nation. The study is a collaboration between the foundation and university to encourage Americans to get healthy, stay healthy and make sure future generations grow up healthy.

Southern Nevada Health District officials will discuss the rankings in depth at 2 p.m. today.

Public health officials, medical professionals, educators, community leaders and others are conducting a community health assessment, prioritizing issues and identifying the resources needed to address them. The assessment will be used to write a community health improvement plan detailing clear, specific, realistic and action-oriented goals, objectives and strategies to accomplish the priorities and ultimately improve the health of the community.

The plan might, for example, present plans to make more facilities open for people to exercise, encourage more dental education, screenings and fluoride applications, or promote the creation of chronic disease self-management programs in Southern Nevada.

Premature deaths in Clark County are dropping, falling below the statewide average but still ahead of the national mark, the health rankings show. Lincoln County ranks healthiest in Nevada, and Nye County is the least healthy county in the state.

Clark is sixth on the list of the 17 Nevada counties. Rounding out the top five five healthiest are Douglas, Washoe, Carson City and Elko. The five counties in the poorest health, starting with least healthy, are Nye, Mineral, White Pine, Lander and Humboldt. Esmerala County was not ranked because of insufficient data.

The health rankings program aims to build awareness of the factors that influence health, provide data for communities to improve and urge leaders to create change. The rankings are available at www.countyhealthrankings.org, and the data shows people how their health is influenced by education, income and community safety.

“These rankings help show communities there are a lot of different factors in addition to health care that impact how healthy communities are,” said Kate Konkle, an associate researcher with the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute. “Almost one in four kids is living in poverty, and that’s a huge issue for a community. If you don’t address those underlying social forces, you’re not going to see long-term improvements.”

The person-to-doctor ratio in Clark County is slightly worse than the 1,802-to-1 figure the rankings revealed last year and well below the states in the top percentile in this year’s health rankings: 1,045-to-1. Gov. Brian Sandoval has proposed spending $10 million in an effort to create new residency programs with the goal toward training more physicians in Nevada. Most doctors establish their practices in the states where they complete their residency training.

Clark County’s mental health practitioner-to-person ratio is 666-to-1 compared with the 386-to-1 figure of U.S. states in the top percentile.

Other areas where Clark County ranks below the top performing states in the country include:

■ Number of reported violent crime offenses per 100,000 people: 715 vs. 59.

■ Percentage of driving deaths with alcohol involvement: 34 percent vs. 14 percent.

■ Percentage of adults reporting binge or heavy drinking: 17 percent vs. 10 percent.

■ Number of births per 1,000 female population ages 15-19: 45 vs. 20.

Some of the rankings, based on data from 2010-12, are outdated — for example, the unemployment rate reported at 10 percent, but which today is closer to 7 percent, and the number of uninsured. Since 2012, the number of uninsured Nevadans has dropped by nearly half because of the Affordable Care Act.

Contact Steven Moore at smoore@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4563.