Idaho Falls in State Health Rankings

Every year, the United Health Foundation rates the health of each state in America, and Idaho isn’t doing as well as it used to.

The survey takes into account several dozen factors including obesity rates, childhood vaccination rates, smoking rates, rates of infectious diseases, and public health spending, just to name a few.

Idaho was ranked 18th this year. That means that Idaho is still on the healthier half of the country. It’s not bad, but it doesn’t look as good considering Idaho was ranked 12th last year.

“Some of the reasons we dropped this year were shown to be an increase in air pollution in our state, our obesity rate has increased, and we’re still struggling with our adolescent immunization rates,” says Mimi Taylor of the Idaho Health Department

The good thing is that these are area’s where individual choices can make a big difference, says Taylor, These are things that people can choose to change to make a difference, she says.

The healthiest state in the union for a third year in a row is Hawaii. The unhealthiest state in America is Mississippi.

The full survey can be found here: http://www.americashealthrankings.org/states