United Health Foundation’s 2011 America’s Heath Rankings®

Yesterday the United Health Foundation released the 2011 America's Health Rankings finding that troubling increases in obesity, diabetes and children in poverty are offsetting improvements in smoking cessation, preventable hospitalizations and cardiovascular deaths. A link to the news release can be found here.

The report finds that the country’s overall health did not improve between 2010 and 2011 – a drop from the 0.5 percent average annual rate of improvement between 2000 and 2010 and the 1.6 percent average annual rate of improvement seen in the 1990s.

Additional findings include:

• Modest decreases in smoking and preventable hospitalizations
• Dramatic increases in obesity and diabetes, combined with still-too-high levels of tobacco use, are putting more people at risk for preventable illness and higher health expenditures
• 2011 is the first year no state had an obesity prevalence under 20 percent