America's Health Rankings 2013 Report Released

United Health Foundation has released the 24th Edition of America's Health Rankings: A Call to Action for Individuals and Their Communities. America's Health Rankings provides the longest running state-by-state analysis of our country's health and the factors that affect it.

From the report: "In a notable shift, Americans took steps towards better health in 2013, driven by improvements in more than two-thirds of our health measures. Most significantly, we saw improvements in key behavioral metrics, including smoking and physical inactivity."

Mary Jo Condon, Senior Director, Partnerships and Projects, with the St. Louis Area Business Health Coalition provided one of this year's featured commentaries, "Making it Easier to Live Well in St. Louis".

You can view the full report here, and learn more on the interactive site here.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and United Health Foundation Award $700,000 in Community Health Grants to National Business Coalition on Health Members

To reduce debilitating and expensive chronic diseases and unnecessary procedures, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and United Health Foundation (UHF) are awarding a total of $700,000 in community health grants to nine National Business Coalition on Health(NBCH) member coalitions. The awards will provide the coalition communities with resources to assess their key health challenges and plan or implement efforts to solve them.

Activities from the various coalitions across the United States include efforts to decrease obesity and tobacco-use rates, jumpstart healthy eating and living efforts, lower the prevalence of childhood obesity, and reduce elective pre-term births.

Five coalitions that recently completed a community health improvement planning process will receive $100,000 each to carry out their action plans. In addition, four coalitions will receive $50,000 each for their health planning efforts, capitalizing on the lessons learned through participation in previous NBCH-United Health Foundation programs.

The five coalitions awarded the $100,000 implementation grants are: Lancaster County Business Group on Health in Pennsylvania; Memphis Business Group on Health; Chicago-based Midwest Business Group on Health; St. Louis Area Business Health Coalition; and Savannah Business Group in Savannah, Ga. The four coalitions awarded the $50,000 planning grants are: Arizona Business Coalition on Health; Florida Health Care Coalition; Oregon Coalition of Health Care Purchasers; and Greater Philadelphia Business Coalition on Health.

Click here to read the full press release.

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