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The County Health Rankings & Roadmaps program helps communities identify and implement solutions that make it easier for people to be healthy in their neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces. Ranking the health of nearly every county in the nation, the County Health Rankings illustrate what we know when it comes to what is keeping people healthy or making people sick and how the opportunity for good health differs from one county to the next. Supporting a call to action, the Roadmaps show what we can do to create healthier places for everyone to live, learn, work, and play. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation collaborates with the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute to bring this program to communities across the nation.

Now in its eighth year, the County Health Rankings continue to bring revealing data to communities across the nation.

• More Americans are dying prematurely, notably among our younger generations
  • Premature death rates rose across urban and rural community types and racial/ethnic groups in 2015. Premature death has consistently been highest in rural counties and among American Indian/Alaskan Native and black populations.
  • In recent years, premature death increased most among those ages 15–44.
• Drug overdose and other injury deaths heavily influenced the rise in premature death
  • Drug overdose was by far the single leading cause of premature death by injury in 2015 and contributed to the accelerated rise in premature death from 2014 to 2015.
  • Large suburban metro counties went from having the lowest to the highest rate of premature death due to drug overdose within the past decade.
  • For those ages 15–24, an increase in drug overdose deaths was part of the equation, but more deaths due to motor vehicle crashes and firearm fatalities also played a role in the accelerated rise in premature death.
•  A focus on opportunities for youth and young adults
  • Disconnected youth (a new measure this year) are youth and young adults ages 16–24 who are not in school and not working, and represent untapped potential to strengthen the social and economic vibrancy of local communities. In 2015, there were about 4.9 million youth – or 1 out of 8 – not in school or working.
  • Youth disconnection is most prevalent among American Indian/Alaskan Native, black, and Hispanic youth. Rates of youth disconnection are higher in rural counties than in urban counties. Places with high levels of youth disconnection have higher rates of unemployment, child poverty, children in single-parent households, teen births, and lower levels of educational attainment – all barriers to a successful transition from youth to healthy adulthood.

Read more on CountyHealthRankings.org.

Mental and substance use disorders take an enormous toll on Americans’ health, longevity and productivity. Collectively, depression, anxiety and mood disorders have the greatest impact on Americans’ health of any condition, according to claims data from more than 40 million Blue Cross Blue Shield members. Substance use disorders have the fifth greatest impact, while hypertension, diabetes and high cholesterol are also in the top five.

The Blue Cross Blue Shield Health Index shows, through interactive maps, the effects that mental health has on our overall health. We can see these effects not only at the national level, but also at the county and state levels. Moody’s Analytics found that counties with higher mental health scores on the index also had higher personal income, greater economic growth and lower unemployment. The strength of our economy and the livelihood of our communities depend on the health of our people. Behavioral health has the greatest influence of all, according to the Blue Cross Blue Shield Health Index.

Studies like this show that entire communities benefit from access to high quality evidence-based services for mental or substance use disorders or both. As more people acknowledge and understand the impact of behavioral health conditions, we’ve helped to close the gaps in the resources devoted to treating them. However, there is more work to do.

It is critical for us to continue improving service delivery to mitigate the impact of behavioral health conditions on overall health. The 21st Century Cures Act, recently passed by Congress, offers new opportunities for policy and practice improvement. The law funds a new National Mental Health and Substance Use Policy Laboratory to promote evidence-based practices and service delivery models through implementation grants and evaluation. It also supports the sharing of information about evidence-based programs and practices for states, communities, nonprofit organizations, and other stakeholders, building on existing resources like the National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices.

Read the full blog post on SAMHSA.gov.

Suicide rates in the United States increased steadily between 1999 and 2015, but the rates for less urban counties climbed faster than those for cities, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

“The gap in rates between less urban and more urban areas widened over time, and rates in medium metro, small metro, and non-metro areas increased at a more rapid pace beginning in 2007–2008,” wrote Scott Kegler, Ph.D., of the CDC’s Division of Analysis, Research, and Practice Integration, and two colleagues in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Overall rates rose from an average of 12.6 per 100,000 in 1999-2007 to an average of 14.4 per 100,000 in 2008-2015. However, rates jumped from about 15/100,000 in rural areas in 1999 to about 22/100,000 in 2015. In large central metropolitan areas, the rate went from about 11/100,000 to 12/100,000.

Kegler and colleagues suggested that some of the factors associated with the disparity were shortages of clinicians in less urban areas, as well as limited access to mental health care, social isolation, and the effects of the opioid overdose epidemic and the 2007-2009 economic recession (which struck rural areas especially hard).

“There is a growing need for comprehensive suicide prevention employing a broad public health approach,” they concluded. Besides general anti-suicide strategies, additional help for rural areas might include increasing the number of health care providers through incentives, expanding the use of telepsychiatry, and promoting social connectedness.

Read more on PsychNews.org.

The National Hispanic Medical Association (NHMA) invites health professionals as well as health professional students to submit a Hispanic Health Research or Community Service Poster Abstract for the NHMA 2017 Conference: Trabajando Juntos – Integrated Healthcare for Hispanics. The conference objectives are to:

• Describe how health care innovations are influencing health care reform’s access to care, quality, and population health strategies.
• Review patient-engaged and health services research that focuses on knowledge and policy strategies that show promise of eliminating health disparities.
• Explain new treatment modalities and strategies to educate Hispanic patients with diabetes, cancer, obesity, cardiovascular disease, depression, sarcopenia, Alzheimer’s disease, HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis-C, and aging in order to decrease morbidity and mortality in their medical practices or in their organization.
• Identify cultural competence, literacy, and language services programs for medical education and health care delivery.
• Describe how leadership skills can be used to improve the health of Hispanic patients in public health, health care organizations and corporations.

Read more about the call for abstracts on NHMAMD.org.

The American Psychological Association has relaunched a collaboration with Microsoft to hold a series of lessons that will bring psychologists into elementary and secondary school classrooms via Skype. APA’s “Let’s Talk about Mental Health” initiative is part of the Skype in the Classroom program, a platform used by educators to learn from each other through the online world.

APA also has made supplemental resources available to teachers who may be looking to use materials to prepare students for a Skype session or to expand on mental health education outside of the lesson.

Skype in the Classroom is a free educational program that aims to remove geographic and economic boundaries to education through the innovative use of technology in a classroom environment. The APA program allows students to interact with psychologists to learn about mental health issues and overcome any stigma they may associate with seeking mental health care. The APA program first began in 2014 and over 220 individual lessons were held during the initial year.

Approximately 20 APA members have volunteered as presenters for the program. The psychologists and teachers work together to schedule 50-minute presentations about anger and anxiety, depression, and resilience. During the scheduled lesson, the psychologist guest speaker presents to the classroom via Skype using materials provided by APA. Each lesson includes time for Q&A with students. All presenters are licensed psychologists and are experienced clinicians actively participating in programs to educate the public about mental health issues.

Read more on HealthCanal.com.

To behavioral health organizations and providers: what are your behavioral health business goals this year, and what educational opportunities do you need to achieve them? BHbusiness can help.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) offers self-paced, online business courses to behavioral health organizations and providers through its BHbusiness program. BHbusiness offers 12 courses to help you improve and expand your business opportunities and thrive in the changing health care marketplace. These courses are available at no cost. You can learn at your own pace and also earn continuing education credits.

What’s the key to being strategic in business? Data, of course. BHbusiness now offers Data Driven Decision Making as a self-paced, online course on understanding the importance of effective data collection, and how to use data to take advantage of service opportunities with multiple funders.

In addition to Data Driven Decision Making, take advantage of these online courses:

• New Business Planning teaches the basic steps needed for planning, funding, implementing and evaluating a new clinical service.
• Effectively Marketing Your Services offers strategies for developing and executing a marketing plan to communicate the value of your organization’s clinical services to the community you serve.
• Costing Out Your Services provides the necessary tools and methods to effectively cost out your clinical services, and improve your decision-making potential and revenue forecasting.

These and other courses are available at no cost. You can also earn continuing education credit hours from the Association for Addiction Professionals (NAADAC) for completing any of the self-paced courses.

Learn more on BHbusiness.org. Questions? Contact info@bhbusiness.org.