The health of people in St. Lawrence County ranks near the bottom in the state according to a national web site’s county-by-county data on the health of populations.

The site, www.countyhealthrankings.org, has collected and disseminated the data, which indicates that St. Lawrence County’s rating in New York State is near the bottom among the state’s 62 counties.

The county is listed as 55th in “health outcomes” – how people in the county are actually doing -- and 60th overall in “health factor” measurements such as smoking rate, the ratio of doctors to population, and education.

Health outcomes are put into two categories, mortality, or death rate, where we rank 60th in the state, and morbidity, or the rate of sickness, with St. Lawrence County at 40th in the state.

The health factors listing is broken down into four groupings: health behaviors, where we rank 55th among counties in the state; clinical care, where we come out 59th; social and economic factors, 57th; and physical environment, 50th.

All these rankings are made on a variety of criteria, with a combination of pure statistical data and subjective judgments.

The web site, www.countyhealthrankings.org, is a joint project of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute.

The measurements for St. Lawrence County are at http://www.countyhealthrankings.org/new-york/st-lawrence. Their methods for measuring and ranking counties can also be found on the site.