Freeborn County ranked 34th out of 87 Minnesota counties measured for overall health outcomes, according to national county-by-county health rankings published this week by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute.

The ranking is 10 places higher than the county finished in 2017, when it finished in 44th place. Carver County was ranked No. 1 in Minnesota, and Mahnomen County was ranked last.

The report ranks “health outcomes,” or how healthy a county is; along with “health factors,” or what influences the health in the county. Some of the factors include smoking, obesity, binge drinking, access to primary care providers, rates of high school graduation, rates of violent crime, air pollution levels, liquor store density, unemployment rates and number of children living in poverty.

Freeborn County Statewide Health Improvement Partnership Coordinator Lana Howe said the organization has helped maintain existing programs, like hydration stations, helping to ensure healthy eating and helping decrease the consumption of beverages with high sugar content. 

The Albert Lea school district has worked to make lunches more nutritious, and signs designating walking paths and the city’s Blue Zones status have been implemented.

“A lot of it is just the partnerships and the collaborations that we’ve been able to form over the years,” Howe said. “I think we’ve seen the increase slowly, and so it’s just kind of heading in the right direction and continuing to improve.

“A lot of that is because of SHIP work and Blue Zones and having kind of those groups work on things together.”

Blue Zones Project Organization Lead Ellen Kehr said the improvement in Freeborn County’s overall ranking was because of several smaller improvements in categories such as length of life, quality of life and overall health factors.

The percent of adults in the county who smoke increased by 1 percent to 16 percent. Kehr said the county needs “to be mindful of that,” and she will push for legislation raising the minimum tobacco purchasing age from 18 to 21.

She said Freeborn County is below state and national rates for poor mental health days in the past 30 days, and the county remained in 30th place for obesity this year. The county’s physical activity ranking improved from 25th place in 2017 to 24th this year.

Other specifics in the report

Freeborn County saw substantial gains in multiple categories.

According to the data, Freeborn County ranked 18th for length of life and 67th for quality of life, increases from 24th- and 69th-place rankings in 2017.

The county ranked 63rd for health factors, which are what influences the health of the county; and 63rd for health behaviors, which includes categories such as food insecurity, limited access to healthy foods, drug overdose deaths, motor vehicle crash deaths and insufficient sleep.

Freeborn County ranked 51st in clinical care — 10 places higher than in 2017 — and 43rd in physical environment, a marked improvement from the county’s 70th-place ranking last year.

Kehr said the increase in the clinical care ranking came from improvements in preventable hospital stays, which she attributed to Blue Zones, SHIP and workplace clinics.

Howe said the rankings, though trending in a positive direction, are only a snapshot into the county’s standard of living.

“It’s awesome to see a number jump so much higher than the year before, but it is also just a reminder that number is just one snapshot, and so we are able to capture that from a year’s time, but we’re also able to look at the trend and see that we are heading in the right direction,” she said.

“It helps those that are working on all of these efforts, just as a reminder that we’re all kind of doing the right things and we’re seeing the positive reflection of that.”

Health outcome rankings for southern Minnesota counties

Freeborn County: 34

Steele County: 31

Blue Earth: 54

Rice County: 24

Mower County: 56

Waseca County: 15

Faribault County: 57

Olmsted County: 14