State of Iowa's Health

You've probably heard about the Governor's Healthiest State Initiative to improve the health of our state. This was partially spurned on by Iowa being ranked 19th in the nation for overall well being in 2011.  The Healthiest State Initiative is responsible for the community-wide 1K walks for which Grinnell was a pilot community.  This and other state initiatives such as the Live Health Iowa programs must have helped.  The great news is that we have jumped up to 9th!  We clearly have a way to go before we reach the goal of #1 but this is great news for Iowans.   For more about other states, read the article below.

If you’re looking for healthy Americans you definitely would rather be in Colorado, which continues to be the only U.S. state where less than 20 percent of the population is obese.

Gallup reported March 6 that Colorado was the nation’s least-obese state in 2012, the third straight year that the Centennial State has claimed that mantle. The state’s obesity rate stood at 18.7 percent last year, according to the Gallup-Healthways Well Being Index.

Massachusetts (21.5 percent), Montana (22 percent), Connecticut (22.7 percent), and California (23.1 percent) were the other states with the lowest obesity rates in 2012.

West Virginia continues to be the most obese state in the U.S., for the third straight year. The report found that one in three state residents (33.5 percent) were obese in 2012, followed by four other Southern states — Mississippi (32.2 percent), Arkansas (31.4 percent), Louisiana (30.9 percent), and Alabama (30.4 percent).

Overall, 26.2 percent of Americans are obese, according to the report. “Nationwide and across states, obesity rates remained relatively unchanged in 2012, but are still generally higher than they were in 2008,” according to Gallup.

The survey also found:

§ 29.3 percent of respondents said they had been diagnosed with high blood pressure in their lifetime. Not coincidentally, Colorado had the nation’s lowest rate of high blood pressure, West Virginia the highest.

§ 11 percent of Americans reported having diabetes, with the lowest rates in Alaska and Colorado and the highest rates in Mississippi and West Virginia.