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Community Corner

People Live Longer in Fairfield County

Fairfield County is significantly ahead of the nation as a whole in terms of its population's longevity, according to the 2011 County Health Rankings released this week by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute.

If you love living in Connecticut but want to increase your odds of living to age 75 or beyond, you might think about relocating to Tolland County in the northeastern part of the state.

According to statistics compiled by an academic institute, Tolland ranks first among Connecticut's eight counties for survival to age 75 and older. Fairfield County ranks third behind Middlesex.

Still, Fairfield County is significantly ahead of the nation as a whole in terms of its population's longevity, according to the 2011 County Health Rankings released this week by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute.

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The Institute, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, released health reports on each county for every state in the union based on data from the Center for Disease Control, the U.S. Census and other federal databases.

"Fairfield County is doing quite well, reaching or exceeding national benchmarks," said Angela R. Russell, a researcher with a degree in population health who contributed to the study.

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The 2011 study uses historical data going back as far as 2001, with its most recent information compiled in 2009.

Fairfield County ranks first in health behaviors

In addition to longevity, it focuses on health behaviors (smoking, alcohol use, diet and exercise, high-risk sexual behavior), clinical care (access to health care and quality of health care), socioeconomic factors (education, employment, income and family support) as well as physical environments (air quality, access to recreational facilities).

Among Connecticut counties, Fairfield ranked first in the 2011 survey in health behaviors, but sixth in clinical care, fourth in socioeconomic factors and fifth in physical environment.

Fairfield County ranked far better than national benchmarks in adult smoking, adult obesity and teen birth rate, but scored poorly for rates of excessive drinking (20 percent versus the national benchmark of 8 percent) and very poorly for sexually transmitted diseases.

The county ranked higher than the national benchmark in preventable hospital stays and had fewer primary care providers than the national norm.

Fairfield County had fewer children living in poverty than the national benchmark, but also fewer high school graduates (85 percent) than the national benchmark (92 percent).

The county suffered four "air pollution-particulate matter days" and 14 "air pollution-ozone days" in comparison with the national norms of zero.

"Where we live matters to our health," says the introduction accompanying the report, which is designed to assist state and local communities to assess their strengths and weaknesses and set policies and programs to address problem areas.

"For the second year in a row, counties can get a snapshot of how healthy their residents are by comparing their overall health and the factors that influence their health with other counties in their state," the report states.

Looking back at last year's report

Comparing the 2011 rankings with those of 2010, Fairfield County maintained its longevity ranking in comparison with other counties in the state, but moved up a notch in categories of clinical care and socioeconomic factors and two notches in physical environment.

William Gerrish, spokesman for the Connecticut Department of Public Health, said the rankings are useful to help his agency "understand what factors have influenced good health in our communities and how we can continue to make our towns a healthy place to live, learn, work, and play."

"By putting easy-to-use information at our fingertips," he said in an email, "the rankings shows us what is affecting the health of our residents and where communities need to improve."

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