New study confirms region’s poor health rankings
Living in a region with an abundance of top-flight hospitals, clinics and physicians is clearly no guarantee residents will embrace healthy lifestyles known to reduce the risk of disease, a recent re-examination of health data suggests.
That is particularly true in southwestern Pennsylvania, where a broad health care network and innovative practice are among the region’s greatest assets. For years, the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area has had higher-than-average rates of heart attack deaths, diabetes and obesity in Pittsburgh Today rankings of 15 benchmark regions, as well as lower ratings of self-reported general health.
At the same time, the region has ranked poorly in health-related behaviors such as physical activity rates among adults and mammography rates among women. And despite a recent drop in the rate of smokers in the region, it remains higher than the national average.
A new analysis of U.S. Centers for Disease Control data offers nothing to suggest those findings paint an inaccurate picture of the overall health of the region’s residents. In fact, the analysis conducted by University of Pittsburgh researchers provides further evidence that southwestern Pennsylvania is anything but a haven of healthy living and that past efforts to steer residents down such a path are insufficient.
The new study looks at the same CDC Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey data used for Pittsburgh Today rankings, but it applies a methodology developed by the Commonwealth Fund that examines data from larger geographic samples based on hospital catchment areas rather than smaller metropolitan statistical areas. The Pittsburgh hospital referral region used in the analysis reaches beyond the seven-county MSA to include places in Pennsylvania as far north as Clarion, as well as areas outside the state, such as Wheeling, W.Va. and Steubenville, Ohio.
The Commonwealth Fund also offers a region-by-region composite score of self-reported health, which finds Pittsburgh near the bottom of the 15 Pittsburgh Today benchmark regions. Some 29 percent of residents assessed their health as fair or poor, and reported activity limitations and at least 14 bad mental health days during the year. Only Charlotte, N.C. and Detroit had more.
While Pittsburgh’s ranking is affected to some degree by the fact the region has a larger elderly population than most, its rate is much worse than the best in the benchmark regions, which is reported in Minneapolis, where the health of 22.9 percent of residents is fair or poor.
Potentially preventable mortality is another indicator in reported in the study. “Everybody is going to die. The question is to what extent do you have habits that are likely to lead to earlier deaths,” said Bernard Goldstein, MD, professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health.
Again, the results in southwestern Pennsylvania are discouraging, with the study finding a higher-than-average rate of preventable deaths, which are defined as those that result from causes considered to be at least partially treatable or preventable. Pittsburgh’s rate of 101.6 deaths per 100,000 residents ranks 11 out of 15 benchmark regions ahead of only Detroit, St. Louis, Charlotte and Richmond. Minneapolis, again, had the lowest rate of 61 preventable deaths per 100,000 residents.
“It wouldn’t take much for us to be better on these scores,” said Dr. Goldstein. “We’re just not doing as well as we should. Why are we more like Detroit and Richmond than we are like Minneapolis?”
One reason is that Minneapolis-St. Paul is considered one of the most health-conscience places in the nation. It ranked as the healthiest and fittest of 50 U.S. cities on the American Fitness Index released by the American College of Sports Medicine, a sports and exercise research organization. The index measures factors, such as smoking and obesity rates, percentage of people who exercise, and availability of parks, walking trails and farmers’ markets.
“We have excellent health care when we are sick,” Dr. Goldstein said. “What this suggests is that we don’t have the processes that will convince people to act in healthier ways compared to other places.”