Map: North Carolina’s healthiest counties also have the strongest economies

The place there’s cash, there’s good well being.

This in all probability isn’t a stunning revelation, however two current studies crystalize it visually.

• One, launched Wednesday by the College of Wisconsin Inhabitants Well being Institute, ranks all of North Carolina’s 100 counties when it comes to well being outcomes and well being elements (map above for well being elements, with lighter shades for more healthy counties).
• The opposite, launched in November from the N.C. Division of Commerce, measures financial misery (map under, with the darker shades for the least economically distressed counties).

Screenshot: N.C. Division of Commerce’s annual tier designation report. Tier 1 is most economically distressed; Tier 3 is least.

Why it issues: Financial stress is a well being danger.

Particulars: An Axios evaluation of the counties that ranked within the high 10 for well being outcomes (size and high quality of life) reveals that every one are among the many 25 least economically distressed counties.

• Mecklenburg, for example, ranks No. 6 in well being end result and is the 84th least distressed financial system.
• Wake County, the place Raleigh is, is No. 1 for well being outcomes and 98th in financial misery.
• Union, Mecklenburg’s neighbor to the east: No. 3 and 96th.

The way it works: Within the county well being rankings report, “Well being outcomes” measures how lengthy we’re residing and the way good that life is, and “well being elements” embody tobacco use, train, sexual exercise, schooling, entry to care, and air and water high quality.

• The financial report crunches 4 elements: common unemployment price, median family revenue, proportion progress in inhabitants, adjusted property tax.
• The well being report notes that the federal government benchmark recommend childcare is not reasonably priced if it exceeds 7% of a family’s revenue. The everyday value burden within the U.S. is 25%, the report says, and in North Carolina it’s 29% — in Mecklenburg, the typical household places between 28% and 33% of its revenue to childcare.
• “Well being is so multidimensional,” Paul Delamater, an assistant professor of geography at UNC-Chapel Hill, informed Axios Raleigh’s Lucille Sherman final week. “All this stuff each affect well being, and all this stuff can be utilized to measure our well being.”

Between the strains: The lack of well being care services devoted to rural areas has been one of many largest challenges of the twenty first century. 10 rural hospitals have closed in North Carolina since 2005, in line with UNC’s Sheps Heart for Well being Companies Analysis. One other 5 have closed in South Carolina in that point.

• In the meantime, 9 rural hospitals have been bought by massive personal fairness companies.
• And whereas massive, urban-based suppliers like Atrium Well being and Novant are increasing their work in rural areas, it’s exhausting to exchange the intangibles of the community-based hospital of outdated.

I spent a number of weeks exploring the fallout in jap North Carolina after Pungo Hospital closed, for the The Guardian and the Financial Hardship Reporting Undertaking.

Sheps Heart director Mark Holmes informed me then that hospitals and well being care services are greater than equipment to a group: they’re centerpieces.

• “When the Hartford Whalers left Hartford and got here to Raleigh, ESPN referred to them as the previous Hartford Whalers for years. They may not recover from shedding their skilled staff,” Holmes mentioned.
• “It’s an analogous kind of factor: We’re an actual city as a result of we’ve a hospital. We’re an actual metropolis as a result of we’ve an expert athletic staff. These issues give social cloth, which we all know is essential to a wholesome group.”