10 states with the best health & wellness

As part of a nationwide study on health & wellness, SmileHub, a nonprofit tech company that specializes in charity reporting, compiled 50-state rankings of states' overall health & wellness. The rankings are based on 23 important metrics, analyzing medical costs, quality of public hospital systems and state funding allocated to public health.

Each state received a score out of 100. States were eligible to earn 35 points based on their community health baselines, 50 points from their health care access and 15 points from personal health & wellness activity scores. The following 23 metrics were considered in the scoring:

Community health baselines

• Share of population served by community water systems with a serious drinking water violation
• Life expectancy
• Obesity rate
• Cancer incidence rate
• Heart disease rate
• Heavy alcohol consumption rate
• Current smoker rate
• Share of insured adults
• Share of insured children

Health care access

• Health & wellness charities per capita
• Cost of medical visit
• Quality of public hospital system
• Hospital beds per capita
• Physicians per capita
• Dentists per capita
• Mental health counselors per capita
• Urgent care centers per capita
• Medicare acceptance rate among physicians
• Medicaid acceptance rate among physicians
• Public health funding per capita

Personal health & wellness activity

• Food insecurity rate
• Google search interest for "healthy eating"
• Share of adults reporting no leisure-time physical activity