Monday, December 21, 2020

America's Health Rankings makes annual report, based on more metrics than before but with no overall ranking

America's Health Rankings map, with figures for states ranking high in multiple chronic conditions added by The Rural Blog

The latest edition of America's Health Rankings, from the United Health Foundation, gives a set of snapshots for every state. The report usually gives each state an overall ranking, but this one does not, citing the health challenges of the coronavirus pandemic.

However, the latest rankings have even more comparative information for states than before, because they are based on 74 separate metrics, more than double the number used for previous rankings. County-level information is available from other sources for many of those metrics.

States with large percentages of rural population tend to rank low. One example of that is the high share of people with more than one chronic condition; the 10 states with the largest percentages of people with multiple chronic conditions are Maine, the most rural state by population, and a group of states running from Appalachia to the Mississippi Delta to Oklahoma.

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