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10 states with the worst health & wellness
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Key Takeaways
- States were evaluated on community health baselines, healthcare access, and personal health and wellness activity, with a total score of 100 points possible.
- Community health baselines included metrics like life expectancy, obesity rate, and cancer incidence rate, contributing up to 35 points.
Based on 23 key health metrics, SmileHub compiled nationwide rankings of health & wellness; these 10 states scored the lowest.
SmileHub, a nonprofit tech company that reports on charities, compared each of the 50 states based on 23 metrics, analyzing medical costs, quality of public hospital systems and state funding allocated to public health. Specifically, the study compared states based on their community health baselines, health care access, and personal health & wellness activity.
Each state was graded on a 100-point scale. States could earn 35 points based on community health baselines, 50 points based on health care access and 15 points from personal health & wellness activity scores. Each category was rated based on the following metrics:
Community health baselines
- Share of population served by community water systems with a serious drinking water violation
- Life expectancy
- Obesity rate
- Cancer incidence rate
- Heart disease rate
- Heavy alcohol consumption rate
- Current smoker rate
- Share of insured adults
- Share of insured children
Health care access
- Health & wellness charities per capita
- Cost of medical visit
- Quality of public hospital system
- Hospital beds per capita
- Physicians per capita
- Dentists per capita
- Mental health counselors per capita
- Urgent care centers per capita
- Medicare acceptance rate among physicians
- Medicaid acceptance rate among physicians
- Public health funding per capita
Personal health & wellness activity
- Food insecurity rate
- Google search interest for "healthy eating"
- Share of adults reporting no leisure-time physical activity
