Do Centre County residents live longer?

Centre County is not the healthiest place in Pennsylvania.

Nope. It’s number two.

The University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health’s Population Health Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation released numbers this week for counties across the Keystone State.

The report measured health in two different ways. Health outcomes looked at things like how long residents live and quality of life. Health factors looked at behaviors like drug use and exercise as well as external issues like poverty and housing.

The upshot? Centre County’s in good shape. Literally. The county came in second for health outcomes and fifth for health factors.

That might not be surprising. Pennsylvania, after all, has a lot of hospitals. Mount Nittany Health in State College faces competition from other providers like Penn State Health, Geisinger and UPMC.

But at the same time, there are a lot of health challenges to the state’s 67 counties. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta shows Pennsylvania clocking higher-than-the-national-average numbers of ten different kinds of cancer. Lung cancer alone comes in at 56 percent higher than the US numbers. Then there are the opioid concerns and heart disease.

Surrounding counties can show more of those struggles.

While Union County is also in good shape at number 3 for outcomes and 8 for factors, after that, things fall fast.

For health outcome, the rankings are: Clinton, 20th; Huntingdon, 30th; Clearfield, 36th; Blair, 45th; Mifflin, 55th and Cambria, 64th. For health factors, Blair rises to 32nd, but Clinton, Huntingdon, Clearfield and Mifflin stay in the bottom half of the rankings. Cambria comes in last locally again at number 59.

“We can’t be a healthy, thriving nation if we continue to leave entire communities and populations behind,” said RWJF President and CEO Richard Besser. “Every community should use their County Health Rankings data, work together, and find solutions so that all babies, kids, and adults — regardless of their race or ethnicity — have the same opportunities to be healthy.”

This story was originally published March 17, 2018 at 6:07 PM with the headline "Do Centre County residents live longer?."