Downtown Alliance - Salt Lake City, Utah

Utah ranked nation’s 7th healthiest state

Utahns’ health isn’t declining or improving: The state is the nation’s seventh healthiest state, according to the 22nd annual America’s Health Rankings.

That’s the same rank as last year. Utah ranked second in 2009.

Utah does well when it comes to most individual health behaviors, according to the report released Monday: It has the nation’s lowest smoking rate among adults and second-lowest binge drinking and obesity rates.

That helps contribute to Utah’s lowest-in-the-nation cancer death rates and third-lowest rates of diabetes and cardiovascular deaths.

But the number of Utahns with diabetes and who are obese is growing. And Utah is ranked in the bottom 10 states for having too few children up to age 3 with proper immunization coverage, for having enough primary care physicians and for ensuring all Utahns in the state are equally healthy.

Called "geographic disparity," the latter measure takes into account the mortality rates among a state’s various counties. Utah has one of the worst swings: The death rate is nearly twice as high in Duchesne County as in Washington County, for the years 2008 through 2010.

A recently released Utah Department of Health geographic cancer report also showed wide disparities. For example, Kearns has the state’s highest breast cancer death rate, which is almost three times higher than Midvale’s. And a handful of communities, including South Salt Lake, Magna, the west side of Salt Lake City and parts of West Valley City, have higher rates of adult smokers than the nation.

"Our goal is to help Utahns become the healthiest people in the nation," David Patton, executive director of the Utah Department of Health, said in a statement. "To do that we must drastically cut our obesity rate, which threatens overall health through diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and other conditions.

"We must also get more of our residents covered by health insurance and attract more primary care physicians to the state, especially in rural areas."

As for immunizations, Utah’s rank for the percentage of vaccinated children has been dropping. The effect of inadequate immunization was on display this summer during a measles outbreak, Robert Rolfs, the health department’s deputy director, said in a statement. "We need parents to step up and take advantage of this life-saving measure."

In Salt Lake County, the nine-person outbreak investigation cost more than $130,000.

The rankings are published by United Health Foundation, the American Public Health Association and Partnership for Prevention.

Nationally, Americans’ health was stagnant as well, according to UnitedHealthcare. Even while there were gains — smoking rates, cardiovascular disease and preventable hospitalizations fell — the report tracked increases in obesity, diabetes and child poverty.

For every person who quit smoking this year, another became obese.