Lists & Rankings

The Healthiest And Unhealthiest States

Rebecca Ruiz, 11.17.09, 12:01 AM EST

New England states top this new set of rankings, while the South still lags.

See: America’s Healthiest And Unhealthiest States America’s Health Rankings^TM: The Only 20-Year Scorecard of Our Nation’s Health –>

This annual ranking, published by the United Health Foundation, looks at 22 indicators of health, including everything from how many children receive recommended vaccinations, to obesity and smoking rates, to cancer deaths. (Insurer UnitedHealth Group funds the foundation.) Scores for each state are determined by gathering data from a variety of government and nongovernmental databases and then calculating how much each state is better or worse than the national average for each measure. Click here to see the report. The below chart lists the final results in addition to rank changes in specific categories over the past 20 years.

2009 STATE RANKINGS

1Vermont

2Utah

3Massachusetts

4Hawaii

5New Hampshire

6Minnesota

7Connecticut

8Colorado

9Maine

10Rhode Island

11Washington

12Wisconsin

13Oregon

14Idaho

15Iowa

16Nebraska

17North Dakota

18New Jersey

19Wyoming

20South Dakota

21Maryland

22Virginia

23California

24Kansas

25New York

26Montana

27Arizona

28Pennsylvania

29Illinois

30Michigan

31New Mexico

32Delaware

33Ohio

34Alaska

35Indiana

36Florida

37North Carolina

38Missouri

39Texas

40Arkansas

41Kentucky

42West Virginia

43Georgia

44Tennessee

45Nevada

46South Carolina

47Louisiana

48Alabama

49Oklahoma

50Mississippi

RANK CHANGE OVER 20 YEARS

Top 10 Smoking	Bottom 10 Smoking
1Rhode Island	41West Virginia
2Virginia	42Illinois
3Maryland	42Montana
4Florida	44Idaho
5Delaware	45South Carolina
6Vermont	46Indiana
7Connecticut	47Nebraska
8New Hampshire	48Wisconsin
9Arizona	49Utah
9Michigan	50Missouri
9Nevada

Top 10 Obesity	Bottom 10 Obesity
1Connecticut	41Georgia
2Rhode Island	41South Carolina
3Massachusetts	43Missouri
4Florida	44South Dakota
5Wyoming	45Ohio
6Colorado	46Kentucky
7Indiana	47Mississippi
8Vermont	48Oklahoma
9Nevada	49Tennessee
10Idaho	50Alabama

Overall Change – Top 10	Overall Change – Bottom 10
1New York	41Louisiana
2Vermont	42South Carolina
3Hawaii	43Tennessee
4New Hampshire	44Arkansas
5Minnesota	45Ohio
6New Jersey	46Alabama
7Oregon	47Kentucky
8Alaska	48Mississippi
9Washington	49West Virginia
10Massachusetts	50Oklahoma

I’m going to Vermont to get skinny!

Posted via web from Jeremy R Erickson