State Rankings

The overall state rankings are based on 50 measures across five categories of health: Social and Economic Factors, Physical Environment, Behaviors, Clinical Care, and Health Outcomes. The Methodology section of the Appendix describes how overall ranks were calculated. Additional information can be found on the America’s Health Rankings Methodology page.

New Hampshire was the healthiest state in this year’s report for the fourth consecutive year. It ranked among the top five states in Social and Economic Factors (No. 1), Behaviors (No. 2), Clinical Care (No. 3) and Health Outcomes (No. 2). New Hampshire ranked No. 9 in Physical Environment.

Massachusetts (No. 2), Vermont (No. 3), Connecticut (No. 4) and Utah (No. 5) completed the top five healthiest states.

Louisiana was the least healthy state in this year’s report for the fourth consecutive year. The state ranked in the bottom five in Social and Economic Factors (No. 50), Physical Environment (No. 48), Behaviors (No. 50) and Health Outcomes (No. 50). Louisiana was No. 38 in Clinical Care.

Arkansas (No. 49), Mississippi (No. 48), Alabama (No. 47) and West Virginia (No. 46) completed the five least healthy states.

The graph above displays state scores and ranks, with the least healthy states on the left and the healthiest on the right. The distance between bars shows the difference between state scores. For example, Vermont (No. 3) and Connecticut (No. 4), while close in ranking, had a sizable difference in score, meaning Connecticut would need to make improvements in several measures to improve its rank. There was also a large gap in scores between Louisiana (No. 50) and Arkansas (No. 49).

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, key findings 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, which show the relative difference between two groups within a demographic, are available for select measures in the website’s State Summaries. 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.