Health by County, Health by Google

In today's Daily Briefing, studies and statistics show us surprising things about health.

Health by County: In the "health by zip code" files, the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation have released their second annual county health rankings. Janice Simmons at FierceHealthcare introduces the report and Marketplace reports that the healthiest county in the country actually doesn't have great health care options.

Chronic Trauma: Regular exposure to chronic levels of stress and trauma actually changes what the brain does with new information. Scott Johnson reports on a new study for the Oakland Tribune.

Obesity: Most Americans think the government has a role to play in solving the problem of childhood obesity, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

Adolescent Mortality: We talk a lot about infant mortality, but a new study found that young adults now have higher death rates than infants and young children. Kate Kelland reports for Reuters.

Google's New Recipe for Recipes: Nicholas Carr at Rough Type explains the way recipe search is changing:

Once upon a time, Google didn't distinguish recipe search results from any other sort of search result. You typed in, say, "cassoulet," and that keyword ran like any other keyword through the old Google link-counting algorithm. Recipes that had earned a lot of links from a lot of good sites appeared at the top of the list of results. But then, about a month ago - on February 24, 2011, to be precise - Google rolled out a special algorithm for finding recipes. And it added a "Recipe" button to the list of specialized search options that run down the left side of its search results pages. And it allowed searchers to refine results by ingredient, calories, or cooking time.

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