Even with scary stuff, report shows bright spots for county

This is the second of a two-part series addressing an annual report that compared health and environmental factors among Idaho counties.

TODAY: How are county agencies reacting to this survey, and what’s being done to fix some of the lagging areas in our health and overall quality of life categories?

By STEVE CAMERON

Staff Writer

Some of the numbers were decent, some were blah ...

But one was scary enough to make the hair stand up on the back of your neck.

Kootenai County has a sexually transmitted infection problem, and it’s headed upward toward nightmare proportions.

Each year, a survey called “County Health Rankings & Roadmaps” is distributed through a collaboration between the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute.

The survey produces a blizzard of numbers in various health and environmental categories — stretching out as far as poverty and unemployment — and while it does not do state-to-state comparisons, it does assign rankings in various categories within each state.

Kootenai County was pegged at No. 9 overall in Idaho, which sounds OK but was skewed by very high marks in a sub-group called “Clinical Care.”

We have a lot of physicians and dentists for the population, and even the number of once-scarce mental health providers has increased significantly.

Smokers (15 percent of the population) and binge drinkers (18 percent) were higher than the state averages, but within a normal range for Idaho.

Nothing was as alarming, however, as discovering that we have 403.7 newly diagnosed chlamydia cases per 100,000 residents (which is how the survey measures sexually transmitted infections).

That 400-plus number compares unfavorably to the Idaho county average of 337.6.

Neither of these numbers makes you feel comfortable, in fact, not when the better counties nationally check in with STI numbers around 145.

That’s a huge difference in an area of pretty serious health danger.

“It’s definitely an issue of real concern,” said Melanie Collett of the Panhandle Health District. “We’re doing just about everything we can in prevention and education.

“We’ve made contact with businesses — bars, mainly, and places where you might find higher risks — and we work with them.

“We have education programs at our area high schools. We reach over 600 students with messages about safety.

“There’s no question we’re aware of the problem, and particularly that it seems to be rising. Anything we can do, we’re doing it.”

And she means it.

“We work with everyone over the holidays,” she said. “We provide free condoms. We also try to get the message about STDs out on social media.”

Anne Goubal, a population health analyst at the University of Wisconsin and co-author of the 2017 study, suggested that Kootenai County authorities look at figures to see if tourism might be a cause of the rising STI figures.

Goubal noted tourist destinations like Coeur d’Alene and Kootenai County generally wind up with higher figures for alcohol-related driving deaths, and a vacation party mindset that can affect tourists also might impact the STI problems.

The regional office of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare did not return calls inquiring about the possibility of seasonal STI outbreaks.

Meanwhile, the county’s water and air quality were fine, but both slightly below the Idaho average.

“Our number of 7.7 (average daily density of particulate matter in micrograms per cubic meter) is way under the national safety number of 12,” said Dan Redvine, regional administrator for Idaho Department of Environmental Quality. “We only got up to 9.7 in 2015, which was a significant wildfire year in the Pacific Northwest.”

As for measuring water quality, that was an area where the survey could only do a hit-or-miss. Any drinking water system that received a violation notice was tagged with an unpalatable “Yes.”

Redvine objected, and with some reason.

“There are 188 water systems in Kootenai County alone,” he said, “and they serve approximately 126,000 people in the county.

“We are aware of only one small water system in Kootenai County that currently is dealing with a health-based problem, and is required to provide bottled water to its customers until a new treatment system is fully operational.

“That small system serves about 160 people. For the most part, the public water systems ... are very well managed and serve clean, healthy water.”

Conclusions?

Exactly what any county decides to do with all the figures provided in this survey has to be decided locally, said Amanda Jovaag, who worked on the project.

“You have to take a look there in Kootenai County and see what numbers might resonate with you,” Jovaag said. “Some things you’ll already know about, but some might be a surprise.

“If there’s something that clearly needs improvement, just the knowledge that statistics back up the notion that you might have a problem is a good start.”

Wrapping up this two-day overview on a happy note, Kootenai County residents can feel pleased that they live longer than other Idahoans.

To compute that, the survey authors set 75 as a critical age — and dubbed anything below that as a “premature death.”

Kootenai County scored 5,800 in that category (years of potential life lost before age 75 per 100,000 population, age-adjusted.)

The Idaho average was 6,200.

That’s some extra time to quit smoking, cut down on the booze and certainly buy a box of condoms.