County health rankings place Miami-Dade, Broward in top half for Florida

Miami-Dade’s overall health is fair-to-middling but Broward feels pretty good, according to a county health rankings report released Wednesday by the nonprofit Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Residents of Miami-Dade are living longer and feeling better when compared among Florida’s 67 counties, according to the report, which ranked the county’s health “outcomes” at number 19 overall.

But overcrowding and high housing costs, together with a high rate of uninsured adults and a rising number of children in poverty, hurt Miami-Dade’s ranking in health factors that impact well-being. In the category of health factors, Miami-Dade ranked No. 28 overall.

Broward ranked No. 11 overall in health outcomes measuring life expectancy and well-being, and No. 12 overall in health factors, based on the strength of its residents’ healthy behaviors, such as declining rates of alcohol-related driving deaths and children in poverty.

The county health rankings, produced in collaboration with the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, compared counties within each state on more than 30 factors that can impact health, including education, jobs, housing, exercise, commuting times and access to medical care.

This story was originally published March 16, 2016 at 5:42 PM with the headline "County health rankings place Miami-Dade, Broward in top half for Florida."