These issues keep your neighbors from sharing in Whatcom’s healthy lifestyle

Whatcom County residents are generally healthy overall, according to the 2018 Community Health Assessment.

But how healthy they were depended on income, age, gender, where they lived, as well as race and ethnicity.

For example, a Whatcom County resident who is Native American may die 12 years sooner than a white resident, according to the report.

That was among the findings of Whatcom County Health Department report, which was released this week. It took a broad measure of the entire community’s health by looking at social and economic factors, physical environment, health behaviors and health care.

And while the big pictures is a nice one, public health officials said it doesn’t tell the whole story.

“Hidden in the averages are the disparities,” said Erika Nuerenberg, assistant director of the Whatcom County Health Department.

Added Regina Delahunt, director of the Whatcom County Health Department: “While we are a healthy community, there are pockets of our neighbors that just are not experiencing the same opportunities to be healthy that we are.”

Such assessments are done every three to five years.

Here are some of the report’s findings, including those that stood out to county public health officials:

• Life expectancy was a bit higher in Whatcom County than statewide. In Whatcom County, women lived an average of four more years than men. The county residents who fared the worst were American Indian/Alaskan Natives, who had a life expectancy of 69 years of age compared to 81 for white residents. The highest life expectancy was among Asian/Pacific Islanders with 84 years.
• Whatcom County is aging. The population of county residents 65 and older has increased by 12.5 percent over the eight years ending in 2016. Such an increase in what Nuerenberg said was a pretty short period of time was “striking.”
  
  
• Nearly 13 percent of seniors ages 65 and older live alone, higher than the state average. That leads to concerns about seniors possibly being isolated and lonely or being at increased risk for things such as falling.
• Rates for jail incarceration and child abuse and neglect were higher in Whatcom County than for the state.
• The percent of high school seniors who graduate within four years was a bit lower than the state. But within that, fewer than 50 percent of county homeless students graduate high school on time, compared to nearly 77 percent overall. High school students who were English Language Learners fared just a bit better, with nearly 53 percent graduating on time.
• Whatcom County residents are struggling with addiction to all opioids, including heroin. Treatment admissions here increased 3.7-fold for opiates and 5.5-fold for heroin, from 2002 to 2004 and 2013 to 2015. All of those rates were higher than the state, and nearly twice as much in recent years. But hospitalization rates for those overdosing on opioids were lower than the state.
  
  

• 80 percent of the county’s 10th graders said they ate fewer than five fruits and vegetables a day, slightly below the state average. It’s standard in Washington state to use data for 10th graders from the Healthy Youth Survey to give an overview or report generally on trends in youth health, county public health officials said.

• Since 2011, Whatcom County has a higher percentage of residents living in poverty than the state.

• Rates of chlamydia and gonorrhea were lower than the state. But the rates for both sexually transmitted diseases were very high in the 10- to 24-years old age group, and they’ve been going up.

• In 2016, about 1 out of 6 Whatcom County 10th graders seriously considered suicide. However, 48 percent of students in that group who identified as gay, lesbian or bisexual have contemplated suicide. Both those figures match state averages.

What the 2018 Community Health Assessment doesn’t do is explain what’s causing the problems.

It “daylights a lot of questions,” Nuerenberg said, “but it doesn’t provide a lot of answers.”

Moving forward, the health department plans to delve deeper into the data — looking in geographic areas defined by school district boundaries — and work with the community to figure out what can be done.

Read the report

Find the 2018 Community Health Assessment for Whatcom County at http://whatcomcounty.us/2018CHA.

This story was originally published July 25, 2018 at 5:00 AM.