Ranking Methods
The County Health Rankings are a key component of the Mobilizing Action Toward Community Health (MATCH) project, a collaboration between the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute.
If you have not done so already, we suggest starting with the County Health Rankings model. It provides the foundation for the entire ranking process.
Counties in each of the 50 states are ranked according to summaries of a variety of health measures. Those having high ranks, e.g. 1 or 2, are considered to be the “healthiest.” Counties are ranked relative to the health of other counties in the same state on the following summary measures:
- Health Outcomes--rankings are based on an equal weighting of one length of life (mortality) measure and four quality of life (morbidity) measures.
-
Health Factors--rankings are based on weighted scores of four types of factors:
- Health behaviors (6 measures)
- Clinical care (5 measures)
- Social and economic (7 measures)
- Physical environment (4 measures)
The remainder of this section details the process of developing the County Health Rankings with descriptions of
- The places that we rank
- The weights used in the ranking model and the logic behind them
- The data sources and measures used to calculate summary scores and ranks
- The quality of the data underlying our measures
- The computational details of calculating scores and ranks
- Ways you can explore the County Health Ranking data
For additional information, you may also wish to look over our page of Frequently Asked Questions.
