Rates of babies born at a healthy weight have increased and Pepin County has reached a number two position in health rankings of Wisconsin's 72 counties for having residents reaching a ripe old age.

The western Wisconsin county has seen a rapid rise in its rankings of the annual County Health Rankings & Roadmaps. Pepin County was positioned at number 31 just two years ago for its health outcomes of residents living past 75 and babies born over 5½ pounds.

Rusk County could not maintain its position in its senior longevity, which was the cause for its falling 15 ranks. The county was placed in the state's bottom four. For the rankings, data was used from 2010 to 2012 and birth weight statistics from 2006 to 2012.

Performance of other western Wisconsin counties was not good enough to drastically change their rankings in the past couple years.

Eau Claire County has remained in the top quarter of Wisconsin counties in the health outcome statistics that show how good a community's long-term wellness is.

According to Lieske Giese, director of the Eau Claire City-County Health Department, positive effects of the community's past efforts could be witnessed through improvement in the rankings.

"Outcomes tell us the result of what we've been doing for many years. But for those of us who are working to improve health, we have to look at the factors. Those are all things we have to start working on now if we want to improve health outcomes", said she.

The factors comprise smoking, sexually transmitted diseases, alcohol abuse, obesity, child poverty, education, air quality and medical care.

Eau Claire County has attained fifth rank in the state in terms of access to medical care, thanks to adequate number of regional hospitals and clinics there.