America’s Health Rankings

Recently, the Partnership for Prevention, of which American Heart Association is an active member, and United Health Foundation released its annual report: America’s Health Rankings. The report, which includes a “one pager” on the health status of each state, calls out an alarming increase in the rate of obesity and also provides important information on tobacco use, high blood pressure prevalence, etc. Follow this link to view the report on Illinois.

Key findings of the report include:

• Obesity has increased 137 percent from 11.6 percent of the adult population in the 1990 Edition to 27.5 percent in the 2011 Edition; meaning today, more than one in four Americans are considered obese. Obesity continues to be one of the fastest growing health issues in our nation and America is spending billions in direct health care costs associated with poor diet and physical inactivity.


• Smoking has been one of the biggest health battles for decades. In the past year, the prevalence of smoking decreased from 17.9 percent to 17.3 percent of the adult population, the lowest in 22 years (from a high of 29.5 percent in the 1990 Edition). But tobacco use is still estimated to be responsible for one out of five deaths annually (approximately 443,000 deaths per year).


• Children living in poverty are challenged by lack of access to health care, limited availability of healthy foods, constrained choices for physical activity, limited access to appropriate educational opportunities and stressful living conditions. The number of children in poverty has increased for the last five years. A steady increase has occurred, from 17.4 percent of children reported in the 2007 Edition to 21.5 percent of children in the 2011 Edition.


• Lack of health insurance coverage increased from 16.0 percent in the 2010 Edition to 16.2 percent in the 2011 Edition, and has increased more than two full percentage points since the 2001 Edition (13.9 percent to 16.2 percent).


• Diabetes diagnosis is significantly higher than it was five years ago. According to the report, 8.7 percent of American adults have been told by a physician that they have diabetes. A recent report from the CDC estimates that the number of Americans with diabetes will range from 1 in 5 to 1 in 3 by 2050. This means a large number of people are either at risk for diabetes or are unaware they have the disease and are not being medically managed.