The judgment is in … America is becoming a healthier country. 2013 health rankings show the USA improving its overall health.
America’s Health Rankings, an annual report co-published by the American Public Health Association (APHA), the United Health Foundation, and the Partnership for Prevention showed improvements to the nation’s overall health, including declining rates of smoking, obesity and premature death.(1) According to the 2013 America’s Health Rankings, Americans made improvements in more than two-thirds of key health indicators.
Important findings of the report include:
• U.S. obesity rate among adults slightly declined from 2012, from 27.8 percent to 27.6 percent, the first time since 1998 that obesity numbers have not increased;
• since 2012 fewer adults are smoking and more adults are physically active by 1.4 and 3.3 percent, respectively;
• prevalence in binge drinking and premature death declined by 1.4 and 2.4 percent, respectively; and
• incidence of pertussis declined from 9.0 to 6.1 cases for 100,000 people.(1)
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Now in its 24th year, America’s Health Rankings grades every state on 29 health measures, which can be seen by scrolling through the “statistics” tab.(2) In the past year, 20 of these measures improved nationally, compared to only eight that declined and one which went unchanged.
The purpose of these rankings is to “stimulate action by individuals, elected officials, health care professionals, public health professionals, employers, educators, and communities to improve the health of the population of the United States.”(1) While many new statistics are encouraging, the rankings indicate that the U.S. is still challenged by high rates of children in poverty, lack of health insurance, low immunization coverage among children, and low birthweight.
As well, remarkable health disparities still exist from state to state. For example, top-ranked healthiest state Hawaii gets $225.35 worth of public health funding per resident, compared to just $37.22 per Nevada resident.(3)
To view a PDF of an overviw of state health rankings for 2013 from America's Health Rankings, click here.
When health in the United States is likened to health in other countries, it is not a good comparison. In an often cited report from 2000, the World Health Organization (WHO) ranked the US health care system 37th out of 191 nations in the world.(4) In WHO’s 2013 publication, World Health Statistics, the United States outpaces many countries on a number of health-related measures. However, the United States is very poor in many of the key measures used to gauge healthiness and it lags behind its peers in other developed countries.(5)
The latest updates on global health indicators by the WHO can be found online.(6,7)
