EDITORIAL: Why this unhealthy county needs to shape up

March 24-- Mar. 24--Cumberland County may be making progress in improving health outcomes for residents, but the bottom line is clear and still worrisome: This is not a healthy place.

You'd think, at first glance, that a big county that includes the nation's largest Army post (by population) would put a premium on fitness. And you'd be wrong. Our soldiers, of course, are mostly a pretty fit lot. They and their families get good, regular health care. Soldiers stay in good physical condition because they have to, and often the habit becomes a family affair.

But that condition isn't infectious. Another large slice of Cumberland County includes many people who go to the other extreme, eating too much of the wrong foods and restricting exercise to pushing the buttons on their TV remotes. In part, it's because there's also rampant poverty in the city and county, and neighborhoods that are classified as "food deserts," with no sources of nutritious foods nearby. And in at least some measure, it's also a simple fact of life in the South, where high-calorie foods are a tradition and obesity is more common than in most other parts of the country. So are diabetes, heart disease and other ailments that are associated with obesity and a sedentary lifestyle.

The annual rankings of county health outcomes and the factors that cause them were released last week by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute. From 2018 to 2019, Cumberland County moved from 75th to 73rd in the state in health outcomes among the state's 100 counties, and moved from 62nd to 65th in health factors -- issues like health behaviors, clinical care, social and economic factors and the physical environment.

Duane Holder, the county's interim health director, put the best face he could on that news. "We're pleased that we showed continued improvement in overall rankings for health outcomes," he told an Observer reporter. "We need to continue to work on some of those social determinants."

In truth, we need to do much more than just continue working on them. We need to redouble our efforts. Poor health is expensive. It costs employers in lost work time and it burdens the health care system and the public and private insurance programs that support them. The county has consistently earned an F grade on the March of Dimes annual Premature Birth Report Card, which means way too many of our children are starting life with an immediate deficit -- one that's linked directly to the health and health practices of their mothers.

We're not alone in this mess. Neighboring Robeson County's outcomes and health factors stand dead last in the state. Bladen, Columbus and Scotland are in the bottom 10 percent as well.

In Cumberland County, the Pathways for Prosperity initiative is looking hard at childhood poverty and the many challenges it creates, and its committees are working on ideas to improve health outcomes for our children, especially in our poorest neighborhoods.

County Commissioner Jimmy Keefe says Cumberland is the only one of the state's 10 most populous counties to be in the bottom half of the health rankings. He doesn't like it and wants to change it, proposing that the county set a goal of getting into the top half of the rankings within five years and in the top 25 percent within a decade. Given what's been, until now, intractable poverty, that's a tall order, but hitting Keefe's goals isn't an impossible dream. A strong, coordinated effort can get us there. That includes stronger efforts at outreach and education, measures that insure all the county's children are getting adequate nutrition and exercise, and a relentless program of initiatives to break this county's spiral of generational poverty, which is the worst in the nation.

But winning that war means generations of healthier children, who then also become better educated and part of a more capable workforce that will give businesses more reasons to locate here. There's nothing, really, but upside to making Cumberland County a healthier place.

All we need is determination.

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