2018 America’s Health Rankings Annual Report

The 2018 America’s Health Rankings Annual Report has arrived! For the last 29 years, the United Health Foundation has released an annual America’s Health Rankings report with the latest publicly available data on a wide variety of health and health-related topics to help policy-makers, advocates and individuals understand a population’s health in a holistic and inclusive manner. The report looks at 35 core measures across a comprehensive set of behaviors, community and environmental conditions, policies, clinical care and health outcomes.

A few highlights for California:

Ranking:

California is 12th overall this year; it was 17th in 2017. Jumping up five places, California experienced one of the largest rank improvements since last year. The state ranks 16th for senior health and 10th for the health of women and children.

Strengths:

• Low prevalence of obesity

• Low infant mortality rate

• Low occupational fatality rate

Challenges:

• High levels of air pollution

• Low immunization coverage among children

• Low Tdap immunization coverage among adolescents

Highlights:

• In the past five years, high school graduation increased 9% from 76.0% to 83.0% of students

• In the past five years, children in poverty decreased 24% from 23.8% to 18.1% of children aged 0 to 17

• In the past 10 years, the percentage uninsured decreased 61% from 18.5% to 7.3% of the population

• In the past 10 years, infant mortality decreased 19% from 5.3 to 4.3 deaths per 1,000 live births

• Since 1990, cancer deaths decreased 13% from 193.6 to 169.2 deaths per 100,000 population

• In the past six years, diabetes increased 18% from 8.9% to 10.5% of adults

The 2018 Annual Report shows that the nation’s obesity rate is the highest it has ever been. Obesity is a leading contributor to cardiovascular disease, cancer and other conditions. Other notable trends include a decrease in the number of children living in poverty and the number of mental health providers and primary care physicians per 100,000 people has increased.

Please visit https://www.americashealthrankings.org/ to see the full 2018 America’s Health Rankings Annual Report.