More West Virginians without health insurance and longtime problems with smoking and obesity have led a national group to drop the Mountain State’s ranking to 43rd healthiest in the country.
That’s a drop of two places from last year’s study by the United Health Foundation, a nonprofit group funded by the health-care company UnitedHealth Group.
The annual study has measured the overall health of Americans since 1990 using statistical categories ranging from smoking rates to violent crime.
For the fourth year in a row, the report found that Minnesota is the healthiest state in the country. The least-healthy state is Louisiana.
The report released Tuesday cited an 11 percent increase in the number of uninsured West Virginians between 2000 and 2005 as a key factor in determining the state’s overall health decline. The national average was 3 percent during the same period.
“They’re right on target,” said Perry Bryant, executive director of West Virginians for Affordable Health Care. “We differ very significantly from the national average.”
Since 2000, Bryant said, 88,000 West Virginians have lost their health insurance, bringing the statewide total to about 322,000 last year.
Bryant said people without health insurance are more likely to suffer from severe health problems because they often put off treatment until an illness or injury has reached an emergency stage.
“When they do seek care, their illness is in an advanced stage, and it’s more expensive to treat,” he said.
The United Health Foundation study also said that the percentage of children aged 19 to 35 months who received a complete series of immunizations across the state has dropped from 86.6 percent of the population to 74.9 percent in just one year.
“We know we have problems and this points it out,” said John Law, spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Resources. “It’s something we look at as a guideline to design our programs around.”
The state’s recent efforts to improve West Virginians’ overall health include programs aimed at encouraging people to exercise regularly and quit smoking.
The study cited ongoing problems with smoking and obesity as contributing factors to poor health across the state. West Virginia has the third highest percentage of obese residents and the fourth-highest percentage of smokers in the country.
The study complimented the state, though, on having a low violent crime rate, an infectious disease rate below the national average and ready access to prenatal care. The survey ranked West Virginia 10th in the country in the quality of prenatal care.
Nationally, the level of improvement in health as measured by the study has been nearly stagnant since 2000, averaging an increase of 0.3 percent a year, compared to average growth of 1.5 percent a year from 1990 to 2000.
The report is “a call to action for states to implement healthful policies,” said John Clymer, president of Partnership for Prevention, one of the groups that contributed to the research.
Topics Virginia
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