Premature death rate puts Spokane in bottom half of Washington counties

Spokane County has better access to health providers and fewer uninsured people than Washington as a whole. Yet the county still lags behind on one of the key measures of health: premature deaths.

A county-by-county assessment released earlier this year by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation ranked Spokane County 23rd in Washington for overall health outcomes, putting it in the bottom half of the state’s 39 counties.

Every year, premature deaths rob Spokane County residents of 6,800 years of life per 100,000 people, compared to just 5,600 years across Washington.

The number reflects the loss of potential life for people who die before they’re 75. The younger someone is at death, the more that death increases the count.

That’s in spite of the fact that Spokane ranked 15th in health factors: things like physical activity rates, education levels and access to care that should determine how healthy people are.

“Despite having this huge medical community in Spokane, one of the ultimate measures of success, length of life, is really different than the state of Washington,” said Patrick Jones, director of Eastern Washington University’s Institute for Public Policy & Economic Analysis.

Spokane has a higher unemployment rate, poverty rate and violent crime rate than the state as a whole. And physical environment factors, like air pollution and the percentage of people who drive alone to work, are also worse.

Antony Chiang, president of the Empire Health Foundation, sat on a national advisory board to help determine how rankings are calculated until last year.

“Spokane is undergoing a renaissance right now in many ways,” he said, pointing to economic growth and the new Washington State University medical school.

That’s quick to translate into improvements for some of the social factors that influence health, like the number of doctors in town or the high school graduation rate. But those improvements don’t translate into longer lives right away.

“At what point does it show up in life expectancy? It will take some time,” he said.

The rankings also show a sharp geographic disparity, with rural and eastern Washington counties performing worst.

“Our rural counties are among the highest need and receive the least amount of attention,” Chiang said. Typically, they’re mentioned just long enough for people to say they’re ignored in health discussions, he said.

San Juan county had the best health ranking in the state, followed by King and Snohomish.

Ferry County was at the bottom of the list, with Pend Oreille and Columbia above it.

And within Spokane County, premature deaths aren’t distributed equally. Black people lost 10,300 years of potential life for every 100,000 people, compared to just 5,100 for Hispanics and 6,700 for whites.