California Watch

Fresno earned a new distinction last week when USA Today reported that Men's Health magazine will recognize the city as America's drunkest, in its March issue.

The magazine’s rankings reflected alcoholic liver disease deaths, arrests for driving under the influence and binge-drinking rates, as measured by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Also topping the list are Riverside (#4), Bakersfield (#10), Modesto (#12) and Sacramento (#20). 

I’ll confess, my first thought was this: "That explains the severity of the housing bubble in the Central Valley. Everyone was drunk.”

But my second, and perhaps more illuminating thought was that I’d seen Fresno show up as a statistical outlier somewhere else recently.

The Voice of San Diego recently unrolled a project called “Out of Reach,” probing the condition of  safety nets and social services provided by Caliornia counties. As part of that project, the organization worked with researchers from Claremont McKenna College to rank California’s 12 most populous counties on a variety of measures.

In the following areas, Fresno County stood out for having high rates:

• Poverty (20 percent compared to a median rate of about 11 percent)
• Property crimes (2,604 per 100,000 residents compared to the statewide average of 1,453)
• Enrollment in the food stamp program

And Fresno County ranked at the bottom in these measures:

• Median household income
• Government expenditure per adult on protective services ($4,024 in Fresno compared to $24,908 in Alameda County)
• Child welfare spending per county resident under 18 ($216 in Fresno compared to $1,067 in San Francisco)

Drinking, it seems, is far from Fresno's only concern. Added together, the high poverty and limited resources for responding to trauma paint an unhealthy picture, particularly in light of research that suggests that health is interconnected with community.

The California Endowment says as much in describing its new Center for Healthy Communities:

The creation of healthy communities depends on much more than doctors, hospitals and medicines. Recent research indicates that the health outcomes of individuals are determined to a larger degree by the environments in which they live, and factors in their communities unrelated to the health care delivery system - like air and water quality, neighborhood and workplace safety, and access to parks and healthy food options.

If a high number of fatal drunk-driving crashes also make a place unhealthy, Fresno is in trouble. But there is one suggestion in the Claremont McKenna report that someone is paying attention: Fresno County's spending on alcohol abuse treatment is among the state's highest.