Houghton County healthier for babies
HOUGHTON COUNTY — A new report finds Houghton County has the lowest health risks for infants in the state of Michigan. The county ranked top 10 in the state for almost all of the indicators in the “Right Start in Michigan” 2011 study.
That means there are fewer premature or low birth weight babies, unmarried mothers, teen births and uneducated mothers in Houghton County than in most of the state. Health officials say there are possible explanations.
“Houghton has been fairly stable economically in the last few years,” says Western U.P. Medical Director Dr. Terry Frankovich. ”Our number of Medicaid births compared to the state, is better.”
But health professionals aren’t celebrating just yet. They say being the on the lower end of some of these statistics isn’t saying much overall.
Thirty-six percent of moms in the county are on Medicaid, and 22 percent of mothers are unmarried. Health officials say that’s too many babies at risk of living in a low-income, uninsured environment.
Possibly the most staggering statistic is that 24 percent of pregnant moms are smoking in Houghton county. Across the U.P., it just gets worse. It’s as high as 34 percent in Baraga County.
Officials say they’ll keep working for improvements.
“We take on new aspects of the problem each year,” says Ray Sharp, manager of Community Planning.
They’ll use the rest of this year’s data to pinpoint other areas to focus on. They say the key to staying the best is more funding for programs aimed at tackling that area’s worst problems.
“We’re spending money fixing problems already there, when a few prevention dollars would go a long way,” Dr. Frankovich says.
To see how other areas of the state did in the study, click here.
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