Americans are living longer, with fewer deaths from heart disease and cancer, but more chronic illnesses, an annual snapshot of the USA's health shows.
The 2012 America's Health Rankings highlight troubling levels of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and sedentary behavior. Medical advances are allowing more people to live with those conditions.
The bottom line: Americans "are living longer, sicker," says Reed Tuckson of the not-for-profit United Health Foundation, which sponsors the report with the American Public Health Association and the Partnership for Prevention.
For the sixth consecutive year, Vermont tops the list of healthiest states, says the report, which uses data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, American Medical Association, Census Bureau and even the FBI. It looks at 24 measures of health, including tobacco and alcohol abuse, exercise, infectious diseases, crime rates, public health funding, access to immunizations, premature birth rates and cancer and heart disease rates.
Top states "have good results in a majority of the conditions we evaluate," Tuckson says. But states such as Mississippi and Louisiana, which tied for last place, "are over-represented in key measures like tobacco consumption, lack of exercise and obesity -- the fundamentals," he adds.
Although socioeconomic factors play an important role in some states' consistent low rankings, "we know it is possible to improve; states are capable of doing that," says Georges Benjamin of the American Public Health Association.
Louisiana has low rates of binge drinking and a high rate of childhood immunization, but ranks in the bottom five on 13 of 24 health measures, including obesity and diabetes.
"We don't have to accept those" indicators, says Karen DeSalvo, health commissioner for New Orleans. An extensive effort is underway "to get us to the place we need to be."
States that showed the most improvement in rankings include New Jersey, up nine places, and Maryland, up five. Alabama, Colorado, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Rhode Island each moved up three.
The report also says:
More than a quarter of Americans (26.2%) are sedentary, with no physical activity outside of work for 30 days. But it's 36% in Mississippi, 35% in Tennessee and West Virginia.
27.8% of U.S. adults are obese, roughly 30 or more pounds over a healthy weight. That's 66 million people. In even the least obese state, Colorado, more than 20% are obese.
9.5% of U.S. adults have diabetes (12% in West Virginia, South Carolina and Mississippi) and 30.8% have high blood pressure (40% in Alabama). High blood pressure is a primary risk for cardiovascular disease -- problems related to the heart and the blood vessels.
Life expectancy in the USA is now 78.5 years; premature deaths have dropped 18% since 1990, and deaths from cardiovascular disease are down 34.6%. Cancer deaths are down 7.6%.
But "there's no way that this country can possibly afford the medical care costs and consequences of these preventable chronic illnesses," Tuckson says. "We have two freight trains headed directly into each other unless we take action now.
"People have to be successful at taking accountability for their own health-related decisions."
The following fields overflowed:
SIGNATURE = 2012-12-11-Health-rankings-Medicine-cant-offset-unhealthy-habitsART_ST_U.xml
To see more of USAToday.com, or to subscribe, go to http://www.usatoday.com
Copyright 2012 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.