Queens Is The Second Healthiest Borough In NYC: Report

QUEENS — Queens ranked 14th in health outcomes among 62 New York counties, according to a report released by County Health Rankings and Roadmaps on Wednesday.

Among health outcomes scores for NYC's five boroughs, Queens was second only to Manhattan.

Health outcomes take into consideration the numbers of premature deaths and those with poor physical and mental health.

The county has the sixth longest life span and the 4,400 counts of premature deaths in Queens in the past year - those who die before the mean age of 75 - was below the state average of 5,300, the report showed.

Queens came in seventh place for overall health behaviors, displaying lower scores on categories such as adult smoking, adult obesity, excessive drinking, drunk driving deaths and and sexually transmitted diseases.

In terms of environmental factors, such as air pollution and driving alone to work, the county came in 23rd.

However, not all the findings showed positive outcomes for Queens residents.

In socioeconomic factors, Queens came in 37th. The report showed lower high school and college graduation rates along with more violent crimes and children in poverty, when compared to New York state averages.

The county scored low on the overall quality of life, ranking 45th. The report showed that 17 percent of the county residents had poor to fair health, compared to the 16 percent on the state level. The reported number of days on which the participants felt poor physically or mentally in the past 30 days was about the same as the state average.

The county ranked 61st in the clinical care category, which includes percent of uninsured individuals, physician, dentist and mental health provider to population ratio. Queens legislators have been pushing to divert more money into the borough's hospitals.

The trends in the past three years showed that Queens was improving in the areas of premature deaths, violent crime, air pollution, diabetes monitoring and number of uninsured individuals.

The rankings for adult obesity and sexually transmitted diseases worsened in the same three-year time period.

Reports were compiled by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute.

The full nationwide county health rankings for 2017 can be found here.

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