State Rankings

Each state has undergone unique challenges during the COVID-19 public health crisis. The specific circumstances of each state’s older adult population in the years leading up to the pandemic have shaped its impact. The rankings included in this year’s Senior Report — the first ranking analysis conducted by America’s Health Rankings since 2019 — are derived from 37 measures across five categories of health: social & economic factors, physical environment, behaviors, clinical care and health outcomes. For a more detailed description of how the overall rank is calculated, see Methodology.

Utah is the healthiest state in this year’s report. It ranks in the top quintile across social and economic factors (No. 1), clinical care (No. 8), behaviors (No. 4) and health outcomes (No. 4) categories.

Strengths: low prevalence of excessive drinking, low risk of social isolation, low prevalence of smoking.

Challenges: high prevalence of falls, low SNAP participation among older adults in poverty, low geriatric provider rate.

Mississippi is the least healthy state, ranking in the bottom quintile across all model categories: social and economic factors (No. 50), physical environment (No. 44), clinical care (No. 49), behaviors (No. 47) and health outcomes (No. 43).

Strengths: low prevalence of excessive drinking, low prevalence of falls, low prevalence of severe housing problems.

Challenges: high early death rate, high risk of social isolation

, high prevalence of physical inactivity.

This graph displays the states in order of rank. The green bars represent states scoring higher (healthier), while the gold bars represent states scoring lower (less healthy).

The difference between the length of the bars indicates the difference between state scores. For example, Nevada (No. 43) and Arkansas (No. 44) have a large difference in score, making it more of a challenge for Arkansas to move up in the rankings. There is also a large gap in score between Tennessee (No. 39) and Texas (No. 38).

To further explore state-level data, see Explore Data

. The website features a state summary for each state and the District of Columbia that is available for download. Each summary describes state-specific strengths, challenges, trends and rankings for individual measures, allowing users to identify which measures positively or negatively influenced their state’s overall rank. This can be visualized using the Core Measure Impact graph by selecting a state in the Explore section. The website also features an Adjust My Rank tool that allows users to explore how progress and challenges across key measures can impact a state’s overall rank.