Ky. again ranks 43rd in America's Health Rankings, ranking lowest in behavior and health outcome categories - Health News

By Melissa Patrick
Kentucky Health News

After not ranking states for two years due to the pandemic, America's Health Rankings again placed Kentucky among the 10 unhealthiest states, ranking its healthiness 43rd, the same slot it had the last time, in 2019. 

Kentucky has found itself among the bottom 10 unhealthiest states since the rankings were first released in 1990, with the exception of 2008, when it ranked 39th. 

The rankings, released by the United Health Foundation, are meant to help state leaders determine health benchmarks that can help them inform actions as they work to improve the health of their communities. 

The report examines a number of measures that influence health, broken into four categories: social and economic factors, physical environment, clinical care, behaviors and health outcomes. 

Kentucky ranked 46th among states in the behavior category. 

Two of the measures in this category show that Kentucky adults don't get enough exercise, with only 15.3% of them saying they meet the federal guidelines for exercise in the past 30 days and 30.5% of them saying they don't get any physical activity beyond their regular job in the past 30 days. Kentucky ranked 49th and 45th respectively for these measures. 

In addition, Kentucky continues to have some of the highest teen birth rates in the nation at 23.8 teen births per 1,000 females between the ages of 15-19; the national average is 15.4. Kentucky ranked 45th for this measure. 

The state also continues to lead the nation in smoking, ranking 48th for adult e-cigarette use and 45th for smoking cigarettes. The report says 9.3% of Kentucky adults reported using  e-cigarettes and 19.6% report that they are regular smokers. 

Kentucky also ranked 48th for insufficient sleep, with 39.6% reporting that they get, on average, fewer than seven hours of sleep in a 24-hour period. 

One of the higher rankings in the behavior category was for fruit and vegetable consumption, of which Kentucky ranks 11th among states. 

Kentucky ranked 45th in the health outcome category, scoring in the bottom 10 states for drug deaths (49th), frequent mental distress (45th), non-medical drug use (41st), premature death (46th), frequent physical distress (48th), multiple chronic conditions (48th) and obesity (48th). 

And while Kentucky ranked among the worst states when it comes to health outcomes, the good news is that the state has a low prevalence of excessive drinking (5th) and has a low premature death racial disparity ratio (6th). 

The state ranked 39th for social and economic factors, with some of its lowest scores in this category being food insecurity (42nd), adverse childhood experiences (46th), access to high speed internet (44th) and volunteerism (46th). 

The good news in this category is that Kentucky ranks 4th for the percentage of students that graduate from high school in four years and 8th for the difference between the high school graduation rates of white students and the racial/ethnic group with the lowest rate. 

In the area of clinical care, of which the state ranked 31st, Kentucky ranked in the bottom 10 states for dental visits (49th), flu vaccinations (42nd) and preventable hospitalizations (47th).  physical environment (15th). 

Kentucky did not get any top-ten rankings in the clinical care category, but got top-20 rankings for number of primary care providers (16th), percent of uninsured population (13th), colorectal cancer screenings (20th) and having a dedicated health care provider (13th). 

The physical environment category was the state's highest ranking, 15th, largely because it ranked first in two categories: drinking water violations and water fluoridation.

from KENTUCKY HEALTH NEWS https://ift.tt/kR7VaJn - Health News