By Tim Bonfield
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Ohio has become a slightly healthier state, but still ranks poorly in smoking rates and heart disease risk, according to a national report card issued by the United Health Foundation.

The state improved compared with other states in several public health rankings, including smoking rates, motor vehicle deaths and heart disease risk. But Ohio dropped in rankings of violent crime, child poverty, people without health insurance, and overall support for public health services.

As a result, Ohio was ranked as the 26th healthiest state in America in 2003, up from 27th in 2002.

The good news: Ohio remained ninth best for adequacy of prenatal care; climbed from 11th to ninth for lowest motor vehicle death rates; moved from 28th to 26th in high school graduation rates; climbed to 44th from 47th for lowest adult smoking rates; and moved from 40th to 38th in terms of lowest heart disease risk.

The bad news: Ohio slipped to 33rd from 30th in support for public health; dropped to 31st from 28th in child poverty rates; to 22nd from 21st in violent crime; and from 19th to 20th in lack of health insurance.

ERIC PAGE UPDATE: Nine months after traveling to Chicago for an experimental treatment for Crohn's disease, a Whitewater Township boy is doing well.

In early March, Eric Page became the nation's eighth - and youngest - person to get a stem cell transplant to treat Crohn's disease, a chronic digestive system disorder that affects about 100,000 children and 600,000 adults nationwide.

Eric is now a high school junior with a driver's license. He's gained 20 pounds since the treatment (he had dropped to about 80 pounds) and has shown no signs of active disease. He still receives nightly, intravenous nutritional supplements.

"He's in remission and living the life of a normal teenager," says his father, Tom Page. "He even went to a dance recently."

It was a year ago this month that the Page family began planning a trip to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago for the potentially risky - and expensive - treatment.

To raise about $100,000 for the treatment and travel, friends of the family collected donations from as far as Alabama.

VITAL STATISTIC: 12,700 That's the number of children from 19 states whose parents surrendered custody so the children could get mental health services. The children were made wards of child welfare or juvenile justice systems in 2001, according to a study from the U.S. General Accounting Office.

The report contained no local data, but Ohio and Indiana officials said it happens. Kentucky did not respond to the survey.

The children are usually boys and usually teenagers. Family income was widely mixed. Among the common factors: the family either lacked insurance coverage or private services were not available outside the court system.

E-mail tbonfield@enquirer.com