State Rankings

The overall state rankings are based on 36 measures across five categories of health: Social and Economic Factors, Physical Environment, Behaviors, Clinical Care and Health Outcomes. Additional information can be found on the America’s Health Rankings Methodology page.

For the second consecutive year, Vermont ranked the healthiest state for older adults in the nation. It ranked among the top five states in Behaviors (No. 1) and Social and Economic Factors (No. 2). Vermont ranked No. 12 in Physical Environment, No. 13 in Health Outcomes and No. 14 in Clinical Care.

Rounding out the top five healthiest states are Utah (No. 2), New Hampshire (No. 3), Minnesota (No. 4) and Colorado (No. 5).

Louisiana was the least healthy state in this year’s report, falling one place since last year. The state ranked in the bottom five in Behaviors (No. 47), Health Outcomes (No. 48), Social and Economic Factors (No. 48), and Clinical Care (No. 49). Louisiana was No. 45 in Physical Environment.

Mississippi (No. 49), Kentucky (No. 48), Arkansas (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, Alabama (No. 44) and Oklahoma (No. 45), while close in ranking, had a sizable difference in score, meaning Oklahoma would need to improve in several measures to move up in the rankings. There was also a large gap in score between Tennessee (No. 43) and Alabama (No. 44).

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.