Hall County ranks as one of the healthiest in Georgia, according to a report released Wednesday by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

While Hall surpassed most counties, Georgia lagged nationally, falling in the 90th percentile for benchmark factors.

Hall ranked 11th in the state for health outcomes (mortality and morbidity) and 33rd for health factors (health behavior, clinical care, social & economic factors and physical environment).

Christy Moore, director of Community Health Improvement at Northeast Georgia Medical Center, pointed out that the hospital was recently ranked among the nation’s best.

“It is encouraging that we perform well as a county in mortality and morbidity. This data echoes two recent awards Northeast Georgia Medical Center has received, placing us as one of America’s 50 Best Hospitals and as one of the nation’s 100 Top Hospitals, both of which take into account the hospital’s mortality and morbidity rates,” she wrote in an e-mail.

She added that the hospital is keen on community improvement.

“We are also in the midst of conducting a comprehensive community health needs assessment; part of that research includes the County Health Rankings report. Community input to our needs assessment has identified some of the same health risk issues, such as obesity,” she said. “The results of that assessment will be available later this year and will help drive the focus for Northeast Georgia Medical Center’s community benefit efforts," Moore added.

At 28 percent incidence, obesity was one of the areas the data identified that may pose “a potential challenge to the community,” the foundation’s website said.

Mimi Collins, chairwoman of VISION 2030’s Healthcare Initiative Consortium and CEO of The Longstreet Clinic, echoed that Hall County boasts a solid medical community.

“Even though we as a county have a very high percentage of diabetes, for example, the rate of hypertension is not necessarily as high as you would expect. That indicates people are managing it with medicine, medicine they have good access to,” she said, noting affordable options like Good News Clinics. “We manage those chronic diseases well as a community.”

Much of the data used for Vision 2030, Collins said, has been made available by access to electronic health records, making it easier to identify trends and spread information.

“I think awareness is step one. It’s important for people in the community to recognize that these health statistics are good indicators of long-term health status and the impact that it’s going to be on somebody’s health in the long term.”

The next step, Collins said, is preventing those chronic diseases before they develop by promoting healthy lifestyles; the county’s worst ranking — 117 out of 159 counties — was in the physical environment category, which considered factors such as access to healthy foods and recreation facilities.

“That’s one of the ‘big ideas’ of Vision 2030,” she said. “Lifestyle, health and wellness, creating a healthier community, not just in their ideas that are specific around health care, but the culture.”

And if past history serves as an example, tackling the issue in a proactive way can promote solutions.

“In the past, we as a nation weren’t too successful at reducing smoking. It was a noted issue within the health care community, but not in the public and not what society was pushing. And if you look at the issue now, there’s been great success at addressing that,” she said. “The community stepped in and looked at the impact and the issue from a cost perspective to health care, and that’s what we’re beginning to do now.”