New Jersey is the 7th healthiest state

You might not think that the land of pizza, bagels, and pork roll, egg, and cheese would have a healthy populace, but, according to a new survey, we rank pretty high compared to the rest of the country.

To determine which states have the healthiest and least healthy populations, Forbes Advisor compared all 50 states across three key categories: disease risk factors and prevalence, substance abuse and lifestyle habits and health outlook.

New Jersey ranks as the seventh healthiest state in the union. We scored 19.23 out of 100 (lower is better), with just 160 deaths by cardiac disease per 100,000 residents and 8.7% of adults with diabetes.

This is pretty important as Americans as a whole are getting less healthy. Six in 10 American adults have at least one chronic disease and four in 10 have two or more, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Unfortunately, the rate of chronic disease is projected to increase over the next few decades. Between 2025 and 2060, the number of Americans with diabetes is expected to increase by 39.3%, hypertension by 27.2% and obesity by 18.3%, according to the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

New Jersey has ample access to healthcare, which helps our rating; our life expectancy is also longer than the national average.

Interestingly, five of the ten healthiest states are in the Northeast, while the South dominates the least healthy.

Hawaii is the healthiest state, followed by Utah.

West Virginia is the least healthy, followed by Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Kentucky.

Opinions expressed in the post above are those of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Bill Doyle only.

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