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Tag: Risa Lavizzo-Mourey

Is Geography Your Health Destiny?

Dr. Lavizzo-Mourney is the President and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.  Before joining Robert Wood Johnson she taught at the University of Pennsylvania, where she was the Sylvan Eisman Professor of medicine and health care systems and director of Penn’s Institute on Aging. In Washington, D.C., she was deputy administrator of what is now the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality.

Thanks to a new set of reports, we now know that where you live matters to your health.  People who call Prince George’s County Maryland home are twice as likely to die prematurely from disease as their neighbors just across the line in Montgomery County.  The data cut both ways.  People who live in the healthiest counties, such as Montgomery or Howard County Maryland have a two-to-three times better chance of living longer than people who live in less healthy counties such as Prince Georges or Baltimore.

These important new facts aren’t just for the Washington area, because the same disparities are happening across the country. This story unfolds in 50 state reports – The County Health Rankings (www.countyhealthrankings.org) – that the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation just released with the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute.

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