Johnson County has the healthiest residents in Kansas; Ellis County is the fifth healthiest; and a group of southeast Kansas counties remain among the least healthy in the state, according to the fourth annual County Health Rankings, released today by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute.

According to the 2013 Rankings, the five healthiest counties in Kansas are Johnson, Riley, Stevens, Pottawatomie and Ellis. The five counties in the poorest health are Woodson, Elk, Chautauqua, Wyandotte and Cherokee.

Three western Kansas counties–Greeley, Wallace and Stanton, are not ranked because of insufficient data.

The County Health Rankings rank nearly every county in all 50 states according to their summary measures of health outcomes and health factors. Health outcomes describe the current health status of a county’s residents and are influenced by a number of health factors, such as high school graduation rates, obesity, smoking, and family and social support.

Nationally, the data revealed that unhealthy counties have more than twice the rate of premature deaths as healthy ones and childhood poverty rates are twice as high in unhealthy counties.

The Kansas data showed similar results.