Is Klamath Falls a Good Place to Live?

Klamath Falls, Oregon is a beautiful, rural community set in the high desert of southern Oregon. With clean air and a temperate climate for year-round outdoor recreation, Klamath Falls is a great place to live, work, and play. In addition to its scenic nature, the community is strong with sustainable health improvement plans addressing top issues and local initiatives promoting the overall well-being.

In more recent years, local groups such as Klamath Trails Alliance, Klamath Lake Land Trust, Discover Klamath, and Klamath Wingwatchers, Inc. have helped add to the vitality of our beautiful natural spaces through efforts focused on the developing and preserving the biking, hiking, kayaking, and bird watching available to those who live and recreate in the Klamath Basin. Healthy Klamath supports these projects wholeheartedly, as research continues to show how important the great outdoors are to our overall sense of well-being and community pride.

Community Health Priorities in Klamath Falls

Klamath Falls is committed to collaboration and improving the health and livability of the city. With sustainable community health improvement plans  addressing top priority health issues and concerns like food insecurity, housing, and maternal and childhood health, efforts are coordinated and resources are allocated to improve the health and well-being of Klamath County.

In 2018, Klamath County was recognized on a national level for this commitment, and awarded with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Culture of Health Prize. This prize recognized Klamath Falls as being a community investing in powerful partnerships and making a deep commitment to enable everyone the opportunity to live well.

Complementary to the work recognized by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in 2018, is the more recent announcement that Klamath Falls has received the honor of being named a certified Blue Zones Community^®. Due to the hard work of the people of Klamath Falls, Sharecare and Blue Zones LLC made the announcement in December 2020 that Klamath Falls met the criteria to, and Klamath Falls is the first in the Pacific Northwest to claim this title, which recognizes the efforts of community partners to help move the needle on health outcomes, and invest in the longevity of their residents.

Local Initiatives in Klamath Falls

Klamath Falls is on a health improvement journey, with powerful partnerships and a commitment to enable everyone in the community the opportunity to live well. There are various local initiatives showing the power of working together including the efforts underscored by Blue Zones Project and the Healthy Klamath Coalition. These groups collaboratively work in Klamath Falls to  enable community members to live longer, happier lives with lower rates of chronic diseases and a higher quality of life.

As measured by the Gallup-Sharecare Well-Being Index in 2018, since Blue Zones Project was introduced in Klamath Falls in 2015, the community has held steady in purpose, social, and overall well-being, while the rest of the state and U.S. declined. Smoking rates have declined from 17 percent to 13 percent and 40 percent of residents report feeling pride in their community - up from 35 percent when the project launched.

Klamath Falls has outperformed rural Oregon well-being trends since 2015, seeing 11.8 percent fewer health risks than expected if the community had followed state trends. This risk avoidance equates to over $900,000 in avoided medical and productivity costs to the community from 2015 to 2018.

Klamath Falls Local Resources

The Healthy Klamath Coalition provides an abundance of local community resources in Klamath Falls with partners like the Klamath Health Partnership and Cascade Health Alliance guiding the community to healthier and happier living. The Promising Practices database informs professionals and community members about documented approaches to improving community health and quality of life. This includes good ideas, effective, evidence-based practices for the community to work together to implement.

Additionally, HealthyKlamath.org serves as a community portal, with information to help support the immediate needs of community partners and residents. Partnering organizations and workgroups are able to share events on the Healthy Klamath Event Calendar, and also create portals for focused work such as Tobacco Policy and Smoking Cessation. Healthy Klamath Connect serves community members by enabling residents to search for local organizations to meet their service needs.