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GREENSBORO — Building community gardens provided access to fresh food in Guilford County, and promoting parks got more people moving in Alamance County.

But did those efforts make the counties healthier?

Yes and no, according to a new report released Wednesday, ranking each of the state’s counties by health outcomes and factors.

In the second year of these rankings, Guilford remained at No. 10 in North Carolina for health outcomes: length and quality of life.

And the county didn’t move from last year’s ranking of No. 17 for factors such as smoking and access to care, which can affect the length and quality of life, according to the report.

“I think it’s positive we haven’t gone down,” said Ken Carter, assistant director of the Guilford County Department of Public Health. “But we’ve still got great strides we’ve got to make.”

A local group was expected to meet today to discuss what more can be done about access to healthy food, Carter said.

Since last year’s report, the county has focused on healthy behaviors, such as smoking-cessation programs and providing more access to testing for sexually-transmitted infections, he said.

Many rural counties, including Rockingham, have continued to struggle.

The report noted that education, jobs, income, environment and access to health care play a role in how healthy people are and how long they live.

The health rankings report was created by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a New Jersey-based philanthropic organization that focuses on health issues.

The rankings look at a variety of measures that affect health, such as the rate of people dying before age 75, air-pollution levels, income, and rates of smoking, obesity and teen births.

Data is culled from various sources, with the oldest information from 2001 and the most recent from 2009.

The rankings last year led several communities to take action, such as passing smoke-free laws, boosting educational opportunities for young children, or pushing for healthier grocery stores and farmers’ markets, according to the report’s authors.

Alamance County agencies worked together to create or improve programs targeting health issues.

One program, for example, exposed more than 5,000 residents to the county’s “most popular, as well as undiscovered, recreational areas” to get them up and moving, officials said in a statement on the rankings.

Officials attributed the county’s improvement — Alamance moved up six spots in the health outcomes ranking — on those efforts.

But Alamance slipped in the factors affecting health, dropping from 28 to 39.

Rural areas such as Rockingham County have been hard hit by the slow-recovering economy. Unemployment is 12.9 percent there, compared with the national benchmark of 5.3 percent, according to the report.

Rockingham dropped from 71 to 74 in outcomes and from 85 to 86 in factors.

Under factors, Rocking-ham is 96 for health behaviors, such as smoking and obesity and the teen birth rate. The county was higher than the state in all of those areas.

The data on health behaviors is troubling, said Glenn Martin, Rockingham’s public health director. But changing behaviors is difficult, he said.

After last year’s report, several Rockingham County agencies banded together to secure a more than $550,000 multiyear grant, which will be used to address the teen birth rate, he said.

The health department, for example, will be able to provide prenatal care and connect young mothers to a primary care physician.

“This is really going to be a plus for our community,” Martin said.

Contact Jennifer Fernandez at 373-7064 or jennifer.fernandez@news-record.com