America’s Health Rankings 2019: How North Carolina Ranks

NORTH CAROLINA — The United Health Foundation recently released the 30th edition of its America’s Health Rankings Annual Report, which represents the longest-running state-by-state analysis of the nation’s health.

It’s not exactly great news for North Carolina in 2019, as we finished No. 36 healthiest overall out of the 50 states. Our state’s ranking was one of the largest declines seen in the U.S. since 2018, according to the report.

Here’s more information on how our state ranked across the five model categories that determined the overall ranking.

• Behaviors: No. 27
• Community & Environment: No. 34
• Policy: No. 40
• Clinical Care: No. 38
• Health Outcomes: No. 37

The overall ranking for North Carolina went down three positions from the 2018 report. Additionally, North Carolina has not seen major fluctuation in its ranking overall throughout the past 30 years.

• 2010 Ranking: No. 35
• 2000 Ranking: No. 38
• 1990 Ranking: No. 36

The report also highlighted that in North Carolina, drug deaths have increased 47 percent in the past three years, and cases of chlamydia increased 81 percent in the past decade. There have been some gains, however. The number of children living in poverty has decreased in recent years, as have infant mortality rates, the report said.

Here are some other healthy highlights from the report:

• Vermont ranked as the healthiest city in America for 2019, the researchers found, followed by Massachusetts, Hawaii, Connecticut and Utah.
• At the other end of the rankings, Mississippi finished as the lowest-ranked state in the nation. The bottom five were rounded out by Louisiana, Arkansas, Alabama and Oklahoma.

The report ranked all 50 states across 35 measures of health, such as e-cigarette use, housing problems and concentrated disadvantage. These measures were then filtered through the following five categories to help determine an overall ranking for each state:

• Behaviors
• Community & Environment
• Policy
• Clinical Care
• Health Outcomes

The America’s Health Rankings Annual Report used 19 data sources to determine the most accurate information for each state, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Behavior Risk Surveillance System and the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey and Current Population Survey.

“The report provides a unique opportunity to track short- and long-term public health successes as well as identify current and emerging challenges at state and national levels,” authors of the United Health Foundation wrote. “When reading the report, think beyond the rankings; every state, whether first or last, has strengths and challenges.”

The full report is available on Americashealthrankings.org.