Health rankings: Pollution’s shaving our lifespan, especially in St. Mary

Live in Lafourche Parish? Your health span looks promising. St. Mary Parish, not so much.

The University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, along with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, released its 2010 County Health Rankings for the state of Louisiana last week with mixed results for local parishes.

The panel acquired data on various health factors from every parish in Louisiana and ranked them in order to find exactly what causes health risks in each parish.

University of Wisconsin Health Institute Associate Scientist Julie Willems Van Dijk worked on the project and said the institute worked to acquire data on all factors that cause early death or a low quality of life, not just medical factors.

“A lot of heath reports come out that focus only on the quality of care in a hospital or the quality of care provided by physicians in the community,” said Willems Van Dijk. “So we knew that we wanted to have a study that looked at a broader picture of heath in a community.”

The study also included statistics on smoking, drinking, obesity, teen birth rates, graduation rates, poverty rates, homicides and air pollution.

The institute then gave weighted averages to create an overall parish health ranking in Louisiana.

“We weighed social and economic factors at 40 percent, health behaviors at 30 percent, clinical care at 20 percent and physical environment at 10 percent,” said Willems Van Dijk. “With our review on what research has been done and our consultation with a number of experts throughout the nation, that’s our best estimation at this time.”

Out of 64 parishes in the state, Lafourche ranked No. 9, Terrebonne No. 17, and St. Mary No. 40 in overall health.

Lafourche, Terrebonne, and St. Mary rank at or above average in the majority of the categories, except in physical environment. Statistics in the study show this area is higher in the amount of air pollution than most of the rest of the state with Lafourche ranking No. 59, Terrebonne No. 61, and St. Mary No. 58.

However, this factor only contributes 10 percent to the study’s overall health ranking.

“We don’t have a lot of data available about the quality of the physical environment, especially at the county-wide level,” said Willems Van Dijk. “So it’s always a little hard to tell if the physical environment doesn’t show up as more important because we haven’t measured it properly or because it truly isn’t more important.”

Willems Van Dijk and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute have done similar studies on a county-to-county basis in Wisconsin for the past six years, and she feels that local data helps local governments focus on fixing their exact problem at hand.

“Some things can be done at a state or national level, but an awful lot of it comes down to local,” said Willems Van Dijk. “We found that many communities, especially communities that ranked on the unhealthier end of Wisconsin, were able to use this as a call to action in their communities.”

However, Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality researcher Timothy Bergeron said the study’s numbers will be incorrect because the state has improved its environment since 2005.

According to Bergeron, the institute used the DEQ’s 2005 data and estimated the same numbers for 2010.

The study estimated eight ozone days in Lafourche Parish, zero in Terrebonne and nine in St. Mary for 2010. Bergeron said statistics showed there were zero ozone days in Terrebonne Parish in 2005 because there were no ozone sensors in the parish at the time, but there probably were some.

“Using 2005 data as a snap shot of unhealthy days in 2010 is just an incorrect method considering the improvements in air quality since 2005,” said Bergeron

Bergeron said when ozone reaches 75 parts per million in a certain area, the air is deemed unhealthy for sensitive groups of people, and an ozone day is called.

“We haven’t had any days in 2008 or 2009 that was an ozone day,” he said. “Every monitor in the state has improved every year since 2005.”

Bergeron also said the improvements are mostly due to rules that have been implemented by the state and federal government in regard to reducing vehicle emissions.