Ozaukee County Tops Annual Wisconsin Health Ranking

The top and bottom counties in Wisconsin’s annual health rankings remain the same as last year: Ozaukee County is first; Menominee last.

The rankings help counties understand what factors influence health and offer advice on how to make changes. The health comparison measures everything from smoking rates to education and air pollution.

This year several new health influences were added, including the number of mental health providers and access to healthy food. Karen Timberlake directs UW’s Population Health Institute, which did the study.

“We understand the food we eat has a great deal to do with how well we feel, our likelihood of getting particularly certain chronic diseases,” she said. “We’ve added a measure that looks at healthy food in terms of how close it is to where they live, and we’ve also looked at affordability of food.”

The county health rankings are a joint project of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute.