News Articles

Tribal communities like mine, the Spirit Lake Dakota reservation in North Dakota, have always been communal in nature. Caring for the health of individuals and the community is ingrained, but historical traumas have led to a range of public health challenges to this day.

Our nation is in a period of reckoning. Now, more than ever before, people across the country recognize that health disparities are harming many communities and holding our nation back from achieving optimal health. At March of Dimes, we seek to achieve birth equity by helping all moms and babies have the opportunity to attain good health and a safe birth. To do that, we must address the wide disparities we see.

The United Health Foundation is pleased to provide the America’s Health Rankings Health of Women and Children Data 2020 Update. America’s Health Rankings’ purpose is to inform and drive action to build healthier communities by offering credible, trusted data – at the local, state or national level – for improving health and health care.

In the Explore Health Topics feature, users can view and compare state values for groups of related measures. Measures are grouped by topic and may be correlated, have similar origins or causes, or provide additional context, such as displaying food insecurity, supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) reach, and demographic characteristics like median household income alongside obesity prevalence. This perspective moves the data beyond a single measure or report and can show the connectedness and breadth of population health indicators.

Robert, a veteran living in California, has several health challenges. But his biggest challenge actually may be social isolation.

In the last decade, public health has evolved to emphasize the need to improve social and economic drivers of health in order to achieve health equity and improve population health. The public health sector cannot do this work alone, the support and participation of other public and private sectors and community partners is necessary to make meaningful change.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on health is complex and multifaceted; it affects people and populations differently. Risk of severe illness and death from COVID-19 is influenced by demographics such as age, race, education and income; chronic conditions and behaviors such as obesity and smoking; and social and economic factors such as housing and poverty.

This year marks the 30th Anniversary of America’s Health Rankings. First published in 1990, America’s Health Rankings Annual Report provides the longest running state-by-state analysis of the nation’s health.

Obesity is a major health concern in the United States, impacting nearly one in three adults. In the 30 years that America’s Health Rankings has been compiling public health information, the prevalence of obesity climbed by more than 170 percent. In 1990, 11.6 percent of American adults were obese. Today, that percentage has risen to 31.3 percent. In 2018 alone, obesity increased by 5 percent, the largest year-over-year increase since 2014.