U.S.

This Wednesday the United Health Foundation, together with the American Public Health Association (APHA) and the Partnership for Prevention, released the 15^th annual report ranking our states’ health. The number one healthiest state this year goes to Vermont, followed by Hawaii, then New Hampshire, Minnesota, and Utah completes the top five. Filling in the bottom five spots are, sadly, my state of Florida at #45, followed by Texas, Tennessee, South Carolina, Mississippi, and finally Louisiana as #50, meaning the least healthiest state.

This year’s report reveals a 17.5 percent improvement in America’s overall health during the past 15 years. However, the rate of improvement, unfortunately, is slowing significantly due to a combination of personal, community and public health issues.

The country is getting fatter, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is naming names. Well, not individual names, but towns. Burlington, Vermont was named the healthiest city in the U.S. The unhealthiest was Huntington, West Virginia.

There are a few similarities between the two. They’re both college towns of about 50,000 people; the populations are mostly white and of English, Irish and German decent; the names sound slightly alike… but that’s where the similarities end.

In fact, the differences may be a microcosm of what the demographics look like when comparing obese and fit groups.