Good news was difficult to find in the 2025 Erie County Community Needs Health Assessment, a new snapshot of county residents’ health.
The 130-page assessment, the first one published since 2018, shows that the percentage of county adults who are obese has increased, while the percentage of youth who worry about running out of food doubled from 2021 to 2023.
Cancer and infant mortality rates both spiked, and the life expectancy of county residents actually declined slightly from 73.64 years in 2021 to 73.47 in 2023.
“The data is concerning,” said Erin Mrenak, County Health Department director. “It’s also impossible to resolve chronic diseases like obesity and diabetes quickly. The reasons for these high rates are complex and it takes time to address them.”
Mrenak and her team worked on the assessment for about a year. It is the County Health Department’s fourth version, with previous ones published in 2012, 2015 and 2018.
The latest assessment was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, a change in County Health Department leadership, and a desire to alter the report’s format. The new assessment is available both as a document and as interactive dashboards grouped in four major categories: demographics, health outcomes, lifestyle and access, and environmental health.
“We wanted to present this in a different format that is easier for people to access, and not just as a single, large document,” Mrenak said. “We spent much of the past three years learning new technologies.”
Erie County Department of Health officials have published the 2025 Erie County Community Health Needs Assessment, a snapshot of the health of county residents.
Data for the assessment was taken from several local, state and federal reports, including Pennsylvania Vital Statistics, the American Community Survey and Erie County’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey.
The County Health Department also conducted a survey seeking health data from more than 800 residents. It then worked with Mercyhurst University to conduct focus groups to ensure data was collected from a wide range of residents.
“Certain specific populations were underrepresented in the survey, including rural county residents, elderly residents and young adults,” Mrenak said. “So, we formed focus groups to gather their input.”
2025 assessment shows that more Erie County residents are obese
Here are some of the most noteworthy findings from the assessment:
The percentage of county men who are considered obese (higher than 30 body mass index) rose from 29% in 2018-20 to 36% in 2020-22, while the percentage of obese women rose during that time from 32% to 35%.
The rate of county students who worry about running out of food at home due to money issues increased from 12.8% in 2021 to 26% in 2023. The percentage of students who skipped a meal because their family didn’t have enough money for food rose from 6.2% in 2019 to 14.3% in 2023.
The percentage of county residents diagnosed with arthritis rose from 26% in 2018-20 to 32% in 2020-22, while the percentage of those diagnosed with diabetes rose during that time from 10% to 12%.
The county’s age-adjusted cancer incidence rate increased by nearly 5% between 2017 and 2021, and exceeded the state’s rate in 2019, 2020, and 2021 — the most recent years in which data was available.
Though the county’s rate of premature births declined by 8.8% from 2020 to 2023, the rate of babies born weighing less than 3 pounds, 5 ounces has risen each year from 2021 to 2023.
The county’s rate of gestational diabetes rose 26.5% from 2020 to 2023, while its rate of gestational hypertension (high blood pressure) nearly doubled during that time.
“We saw a lot of births during the COVID time period, when access to medical care wasn’t the best,” said Lauren Mathis, a County Health Department epidemiology research associate.
Erie County health officials will create improvement plan
County health officials will use the assessment to create the next Erie County Community Health Improvement Plan, which will outline how the County Health Department will attempt to improve some of the poor health outcomes.
Erin Mrenak, Erie County Department of Health director, oversaw the 2025 Erie County Community Health Needs Assessment. It’s the fourth report overall and first since 2018.
Work will begin this fall on creating the plan and is expected to be completed within a matter of months, Mrenak said.
“We will work with our team to take priority issues and come up with ways to deal with them,” Mrenak said. “We may be collaborating with local health systems later on, but not as part of creating CHIP.”
Contact David Bruce at dbruce@gannett.com. Follow him on X @ETNBruce.
This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: What Erie County’s health report. found about obesity, food insecurity