Photography via Flickr/ Marek Kubica
Missouri—and St. Louis—collect accolades both good and bad, including St. Louis as one of the most fun cities and best places to get a job, and Missouri possessing two of the best cities to live in the year 2018.
With all this good buzz, we must keep ourselves humble. Enter the United Health Foundation's annual comprehensive heath ranking of all 50 states, America’s Health Rankings.
The good news is that we are two spots up from where we were previously. The bad news is that we are still 38th with a negative score of -0.345.
The top five healthiest states are, shockingly, Hawaii, followed by a few New England states including Massachusetts (number 2), Connecticut (number 3), and Vermont (number 4), and rounding out with Utah. And even in the Midwest we don't rank that high, with Kansas at number 27, Nebraska at 15, and Iowa at 18.
Perhaps it isn't our fault...we seem to be surrounded by an entire region that isn't doing too well, either: Arkansas (number 46), Oklahoma (number 47), Alabama (number 48), Mississippi (number 49), and Louisiana (number 50). Some factors that are hurting us: a high violent crime rate, a high cancer death rate, and low per capita public health funding.
But as moving up two spots signifies, it isn't all bad. Missouri also has a high percentage of high school graduates, lots of primary care physicians, and a low prevalence of diabetes.
At this rate, we will be number one eventually, or, er...hopefully.
