2020 County Health Rankings Show Some Improvement for Starke, Pulaski Counties

Starke and Pulaski counties’ annual health rankings continue to see improvement. The 2020 County Health Rankings have been released by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin’s Population Health Institute.

They show that Starke County ranks 73rd of Indiana’s 92 counties when it comes to health outcomes, like length and quality of life. That’s an improvement of two places from last year.

Starke County continues to rank lower when it comes to health factors, which include everything from health behaviors and education levels, to air quality and access to health care, moving up from 85th to 84th place. A big challenge appears to be access to doctors, with the ratio of primary care physicians, dentists, and mental health providers compared to the overall population being far lower than the state overall. Starke County residents are also more likely to die from an injury.

Meanwhile, Pulaski County saw a major jump in its health factors ranking, going from 51st place in 2019 up to 33rd in 2020. Pulaski County ranked particularly high in health behaviors, with the smoking, obesity, and excessive drinking rates all slightly below the state average, although access to exercise opportunities lags behind the rest of the state. When it came to health outcomes, Pulaski County dropped slightly, from 66th to 69th place.