Travis County 8th healthiest county in Texas

The annual County Health Rankings have been released, and out of Texas counties, Travis County is in eighth place in overall health outcomes. The healthiest county in Texas is Denton County and coming in last in the list of 242 participating counties is Duval County in South Central Texas. Twelve counties were not ranked. The rankings are determined by looking at factors like the population’s exercise opportunities and access to healthy foods and rates of smoking, obesity, sexually transmitted infections and teen births.  The country ranked well in many areas such as exercise opportunities and availability of primary care physicians. However, the county ranked poorly in the category of excessive drinking: 23 percent of the population surveyed reported binge drinking in the past 30 days. This is the ninth year that the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation have released the nationwide rankings. Counties can use this information to improve the provision of health resources in the community.