Most of the unhealthiest states in the US hail from the South, while some of the nation’s healthiest find themselves on the East Coast, according to a study by Forbes Advisor.
West Virginia, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Kentucky, Alabama, Louisiana and Oklahoma represented eight of the 10 least healthy states in the US.
The outlet compared each state across 21 metrics spanning three categories: disease risk factors and prevalence, substance abuse, lifestyle habits and health outlook.
West Virginia was deemed as the least healthy state after scoring the highest in the percentage of adults who smoke (21%) and highest in the percentage of obese adults (41%), according to Forbes Advisor.
Other categories saw the state rank second-worst in life expectancy at 73.9 years old and a record third-highest percentage of adults who did not exercise in the past month (30.2%).
The data Forbes provided was tracked by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Six in 10 American adults have at least one chronic disease (heart disease, stroke, cancer), while four in 10 have two or more, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Most of the unhealthy states ranked were factored by percentages of high cholesterol rates, chronic disease mortality rates, and kidney disease mortality rates that were through the roof compared to others.
Meanwhile, Hawaii headlines the healthiest state’s population in the US followed by Utah, Connecticut, Minnesota and Massachusetts — New Jersey ranks seventh, New Hampshire eighth and New York tenth.
Connecticut earned distinctions like lowest diabetes mortality rate, fourth-lowest stroke mortality rate, and eighth-lowest cancer mortality rate.
Almost all of the Southern states that found themselves in the bottom 10 of the rankings all had one thing in common: high substance abuse.
West Virginia ranked the highest with 75.03 per 100,000 state residents, as Kentucky ranked third with 45.77 deaths per 100,000 state residents.
In 2019, researchers at West Virginia University said fentanyl deaths increased 122 percent citing drug-related deaths in the state between 2005 to 2017.
