Health Rankings

For the past 21 years, the United Health Foundation has published "America's Health Rankings", an annual analysis of the nation's health on a state-by-state basis. The 2010 rankings reveal that the overall health of the U.S. population has improved by one percent over the previous year and that Florida ranks as the 37^th healthiest state, as compared with the 36^th ranking it held in 2009. Health is a central determinant in the quality of Floridians' lives, from a child's capacity to learn in the classroom to a parent's ability to provide for their family. It is the foundation on which so much else depends. Good health is the best investment we can make in our future. Data from America's Health Rankings helps pinpoint improvement opportunities for policy-makers as well as for the life sciences research community. As a state, Florida has never ranked better than 30th and now consistently ranks in the high 30's as evidenced in Figure below.

Florida's Overall Health Ranking

Source: http://www.americashealthrankings.org/yearcompare/2009/2010/FL.aspx

Issues that consistently prevent Florida from rising in the rankings include: high incidences of infectious disease, low high school graduation rates, a high rate of Floridians without healthcare insurance, a high violent crime rate, a high geographic disparity within the state, and deeply imbedded health disparity issues.

These data for Florida from 2006 to 2009, summarized in Table 3, are comprised of two major categories:

1. Determinants, and
2. Health Outcomes.

Determinants are demographic characteristics that affect the health outcomes in the future. For example, the steady increase in the prevalence of obesity can be expected to contribute to an increase in the number of cardiovascular and cancer deaths in the coming years.

A characteristic of the Table 3 data important to examine is the magnitude of the change over the five-year time period. A common technique to not only determine the magnitude but to compare changes among different determinants is to use a "standard score". The standard score in Table 3 indicates how many standard deviations the 2010 data are above or below the five year average. (Standard deviation is a measure of the variability in a set of data.) Prevalence of obesity in the population has a standard score of +2.0, while prevalence of smoking has standard score of -0.9; thus, the change in obesity has roughly three times the magnitude as the change in smoking. Using the standard score allows one to make informed decision between the severities of determinants and health outcomes. Health outcomes are a key driving force behind the costs of healthcare, the economic burdens of disease, and biomedical research priorities.

The table below includes the standard score for each measure and the change in standard score from 2009 data. The variations from the average indicate trends shown by a green for a healthy trend, and a red for an unhealthy trend. For example, the prevalence of obesity has a standard score of 2.0 , indicating that the prevalence of obesity has increased substantially (in fact it has doubled in the past 20 years). The positive score in this case is an unfavorable red

America's Health Rankings 2006 - 2010

Source: http://www.americashealthrankings.org