Trumbull County ranks near the bottom 25 percent of Ohio's healthiest counties. Mahoning County ranks worse in the evaluation, a study shows.
The County Health Rankings, a national examination done by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Wisconsin University's Population Health Institute has Portage, Columbiana and Geauga counties outranking the Mahoning Valley in the five-county region.
It lists Geauga as the second-healthiest county in Ohio, with Delaware as the first. Trumbull was listed at 66th and Mahoning, 75th out of the state's 88 counties.
''From our perspective, it shows we are doing our best work and one of the strengths of our department is the public health education,'' Trumbull County Health Commissioner Dr. James Enyeart said.
''It shows that our work in the environment needs to go on. It shows the community at large is suffering from what we all recognize it is suffering from, the financial worries and the implications of that.''
Trumbull County was ranked 26th in health behavior, which looked at adult smoking and obesity, alcohol use and chlamydia and teen birth rates.
Mahoning was 21st for health behavior and ranked 17th in access to clinical care, a category in which Trumbull County ranked 60th.
Mahoning County Health Commissioner Matthew Stefanak said the high ranking in clinical care shows people there have good access to care and are using it.
He likened the standings to a report card: ''I would give a B+ in the areas of health behaviors and access to care. I think we get, at best, a D in social and economic factors and premature death, maybe a D-.
''It's a mixed bag as far as a report card goes,'' Stefanak said.
Both counties ranked toward the bottom of the social and economic list, which considered among the categories, unemployment, high school graduation rates and residents with college degrees, homicide rates and income. Trumbull County was 71st and Mahoning, 80th.
The area did better in the physical environment category, which looked at air quality, access to healthy foods and liquor store density with rankings of 59th for Trumbull and 65th for Mahoning.
The top five counties overall in Ohio were Delaware, Geauga, Holmes, Medina and Warren. The bottom five, from the last were Lawrence, Scioto, Gallia, Jackson and Meigs.