US - West

San Diego county is one of 61 grantees in US states and communities awarded with a Community Transformation Grant. The $3 million award is the second largest dollar amount awarded to a county government, under this grant program.

The County-funded projects will address issues such as tobacco-free living, active lifestyles, healthy eating, and the increased use of clinical prevention services.

“This Community Transformation Grant will help the County focus on projects that will improve the community’s health and well-being,” said Chairman Bill Horn, County Board of Supervisors. “The grant will assist us in reducing the three behaviors; lack of exercise, poor diet and tobacco use, which result in the four top chronic diseases that cause over 50 percent of the deaths in San Diego.”

In 2008 emergency planners predicted that if a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck southern California, 60 percent of hospital beds in Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Riverside, and Orange counties would be knocked out of commission.

To allow aid workers to treat the thousands of potentially injured residents during the quake, first responders are developing alternative medical care policies like emergency tents stocked with medical equipment.

Kay Fruhwirth, the head of the LA County Office of Emergency Management, said the number of available beds “is really dependent on the level of impact, but we have plans and we know in general what hospitals can do to meet increased demands for a lot of people who need medical care.”

To that end, Fruhwirth said surge tents would be put in place for initial triage and the sorting out of patients for short-term care. In addition, thirteen hospitals in ten locations throughout the region have Disaster Resource Centers, which are equipped with tent shelters that are capable of housing at least forty patients for the first forty-eight hours after a disaster.

“All hospitals do planning for disasters, but these centers have additional supplies and equipment, which can also be moved to the impacted area,” Fruhwirth explained.

Early this year, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin released their rankings of the health of residents in almost every county in the nation based upon 2010 data. The "County Health Rankings" report, which used 27 measures to gauge public health in all 50 states, ranked San Diego County as California's 16th healthiest county.

The information should be “a call for action for communities to work together to address the things that are influencing their health,” said Patrick Remington, an associate dean at the University of Wisconsin and a study director. “These rankings tell us that where we live matters to our health.”

According to experts, it is predictable that residents in California’s five healthiest counties — Marin, San Benito, Placer, Santa Clara and San Mateo — are also among the wealthiest and best educated. Residents in the five unhealthiest counties — Trinity, Del Norte, Siskiyou, Lake and Yuba — have incomes nearly half of the statewide median and live in isolated areas of Northern California.

In Southern California, Orange County ranked sixth, Los Angeles County ranked 26th, Riverside County 29th and Imperial County 37th.