The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation recently released its comprehensive county health rankings, and Suffolk was … just average.

The report ranks a wide variety of health factors and outcomes. Premature death, poor mental health days and low birthweight are tracked. So are smoking, obesity, physical inactivity, excessive drinking, teen births and sexually transmitted diseases. So are the number of people who are uninsured, the ratio of physicians, dentists and mental health providers to the general population and the percent who receive regular diabetes monitoring and mammograms.

The study delves even farther into social and economic factors, such as level of education, unemployment, children living in poverty, income inequality and more. The physical environment — air pollution, people driving alone to work and people who have a long commute — is also tracked.

In other words, the study is quite wide-ranging. It tracks length of life as well as the quality of that life. It tracks not only individual health behaviors — that which an individual can control — but also the amount of health care providers and the physical environment as well as social and economic factors, which are harder for humans to control.

With all of that taken into account, Suffolk was … just average. The city barely ranked in the top 50 percent of localities in the state. Out of 133, it ranked 55th in health factors and 59th in health outcomes.

Suffolk has improved considerably in these rankings over the years. In 2011, the oldest year available on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation website, the city ranked 70th.

A trend in the rankings seems to be that affluent communities perform better. Loudoun, Arlington, Fairfax and Falls Church are the top-ranked localities — which is, after all, no surprise, since income inequality is actually one of the items ranked.

Groups like the Obici Healthcare Foundation, the Suffolk Foundation, Suffolk Public Schools, the American Diabetes Association, the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association and many others are surely looking at the data to see what they can do to help change it. Surely their efforts have already helped improve the city’s ratings from 2011.

However, there are always things that can improve regardless of how little of it seems to be in our control. There are lessons here for all of us as individuals. Lifestyle changes for smokers, adults who are obese, those who drink excessively and those who do not get much physical activity can help improve the ratings. More importantly, it will help improve their lives.