Kane County gets B- for overall health

Kane County's annual checkup resulted in a slightly above average grade of B- for overall health, but lingering problems which require a communal solution remain unattended.

Kane County Health Department Executive Director Paul Kuehnert delivered the news at the first annual meeting of the board of health in two years. There was no meeting last year because of changes in health department management.

Kuehnert delivered individualized health reports to county board members, broken out by district, that highlighted the major concerns.

Among them, every district in the county has seen at least one or two instances of children with lead poisoning. Such poisoning can cause learning problems, violent behavior or even death for the exposed children.

"This issue is the poster child for public health," Kuehnert said. "This is something we've known now for the better part of a century. It's entirely preventable, but it's not that simple."

What makes it hard is the abundance of lead paint in homes that are several decades old throughout the area, Kuehnert said. That's caused Kane County to have one of the highest rates of childhood lead poisoning in the state.

The best way to address the issue, Kuehnert said, is to use the model of one of the county's health success stories - the continuing decline in the number of smokers. The statewide smoking ban, ongoing public education on the health effects of smoking and an overall change in the perception of cigarettes has caused the downward smoking trend, Kuehnert said.

But lead poisoning isn't the biggest health problem in Kane County. The health department estimates one in seven county residents, or about 14 percent, have no health insurance. As the economy stagnates and unemployment increases, so does the number of people with inadequate or no access to health care, Kuehnert said.

Racial disparities in prenatal care also are a deadly problem in the county. There is a stark contrast in the health of African-American babies versus all other newborns in the county, Kuehnert said.

For every three white babies who die within a year of their birth, nine African-American babies die in Kane County. Births to teenage African-American moms are also 33 percent more common than in other races. And low birth weights are more than twice as likely in African-American babies than other newborns.

The county hopes to decrease both low birth weights and prematurity by 20 percent by the year 2030 or sooner.

Cutting the incidence of heart disease, cancer and other chronic diseases and improving access to mental health care for the more than 80,000 Kane County residents who need those services are also top priorities moving forward.

The health department will update the county's progress toward those long-term goals next year. By then the department should have a full public health score card for the county that will measure and track its health problems for the future.