Most of the nation's unhealthiest states are from the South, while some of the nation's healthiest states are on the East Coast, according to a Forbes Advisor study.
West Virginia, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Kentucky, Alabama, Louisiana, and Oklahoma accounted for eight of the 10 least healthy states in the United States.
The news organization compared states across 21 indicators across three categories: disease risk factors and prevalence, substance abuse, lifestyle and health outlook.
West Virginia was considered the least healthy state after scoring the highest percentage of adults who smoke (21%) and the highest percentage of adults who are obese (41%). According to Forbes Advisor.
In other categories, the state had the second-worst life expectancy at 73.9 years, and the third-highest percentage of adults who did not exercise in the past month (30.2%).
The data provided by Forbes 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), and four in 10 have two or more chronic conditions. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Most of the ranked unhealthy states were considered by their high cholesterol rates, chronic disease mortality rates, and kidney disease mortality rates, which were orders of magnitude higher than other states.
Meanwhile, Hawaii leads the list of states with the healthiest populations, followed by Utah, Connecticut, Minnesota, and Massachusetts, followed by New Jersey in 7th, New Hampshire in 8th, and New York in 10th.
Connecticut earned honors including having the lowest diabetes death rate, fourth lowest stroke death rate, and eighth lowest cancer death rate.
Nearly all the Southern states in the bottom 10 of the rankings had one thing in common: high levels of drug abuse.
West Virginia had the highest rate of deaths at 75.03 per 100,000 residents, and Kentucky ranked third with 45.77 deaths per 100,000 residents.
In 2019, West Virginia University researchers announced a 122 percent increase in fentanyl deaths in the state between 2005 and 2017.
