Remington's Langmuir Lecture Features County Health Rankings

Patrick Remington, MD, MPH, associate dean for public health at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison, presented the 2010 Langmuir Lecture this week at the 59th annual Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) Conference in Atlanta.

Established in 1951, the Epidemic Intelligence Service is a two-year applied epidemiology training program, part of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Remington served as an EIS officer from 1982 to 1984.

The annual week-long conference attracts national and international epidemiologists and public health practitioners. The Langmuir Lectureship, established in 1972, is one of the most prestigious and recognized in the fields of public health and epidemiology in the United States.

Remington's talk focused on strategies to use epidemiology to mobilize action toward community health. He described the national County Health Rankings, a first-of-its-kind collection of 50 reports - one per state - that ranks all counties within each state on their overall health outcomes and health factors.

The rankings, published earlier this year by the UW Population Health Institute in collaboration with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, serve as a call to action and help community leaders identify factors that make residents unhealthy and mobilize communities to develop solutions.