State Rankings

Rankings included in the 2024 Health of Women and Children Report are derived from 82 measures across five categories of health: Social and Economic Factors, Physical Environment, Behaviors, Clinical Care and Health Outcomes. Visit the America’s Health Rankings Methodology page for a more detailed description of how the overall rank is calculated.

New Hampshire is the healthiest state in this year’s report, ranking first for children and sixth for women. It ranks among the top five states in Social and Economic Factors (No. 2), Behaviors (No. 2) and Clinical Care (No. 4). New Hampshire is No. 13 in Physical Environment and No. 15 in Health Outcomes.

Massachusetts (No. 2), Minnesota (No. 3), New Jersey (No. 4) and Vermont (No. 5) complete the top five healthiest states.

Arkansas is the least healthy state in this year’s report, ranking No. 49 for children and last for women. It ranks in the bottom five states in Social and Economic Factors (No. 50), Physical Environment (No. 47), Behaviors (No. 48) and Health Outcomes (No. 49). Arkansas is No. 44 in Clinical Care.

Mississippi (No. 49), Louisiana (No. 48), Oklahoma (No. 47) and West Virginia (No. 46) complete the five least healthy states.

This graph displays the state scores and rank with the least healthy states on the top left and the healthiest states on the top right. The distance between bars shows the difference between state scores. For example, Oklahoma (No. 47) and West Virginia (No. 46), while close in ranking, have a sizable difference in score, meaning Oklahoma would need to make improvements in many measures to improve its rank. There is also a large gap in score between Oklahoma and Louisiana (No. 48).

To further explore state-level data, see Explore Data. The website features downloadable State Summaries for each state and the District of Columbia. Each summary describes state-specific strengths, challenges, trends and rankings for individual measures, allowing users to identify which measures positively or negatively influenced each state’s overall rank. This can be visualized by selecting a state in the Explore Data section. Disparity ratios, the relative difference between two groups within a demographic, have been added to the State Summaries on the website this year. For addThe website also features an Adjust My Rank tool that allows users to explore how progress and challenges across key measures can affect a state’s overall rank.