By Philip Newman


An annual report on the state of health in counties throughout the United States includes many examples of healthy counties next door to not-so-healthy neighbors with Queens and Brooklyn providing a telling contrast.

In the report “How Healthy Is Your County?” by the University of Wisconsin and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Queens is rated the city’s healthiest at No. 20 among New York’s 62 counties in healthiness. But Brooklyn is No. 58, only a few notches above the least healthy place in New York City, the Bronx at No. 62.

“To start with, Queens has a lower number of premature deaths — that is, deaths to people under 75 of maladies or conditions that can be controlled,” said Angela Russell, a researcher for the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute.

The Queens figure for premature deaths was 5.072 compared with 6,740 compared for Brooklyn.

“Then Brooklyn’s smoking figure [17 percent of adults] is higher than Queens’ [15 percent] as are the numbers for excessive drinking [15 percent to 13 percent],” Russell said.

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