The United Health Foundation has released its America’s Health Rankings for 2022 and Louisiana is ranked dead last at 50. A major reason for Louisiana’s poor ranking is that drug deaths rose by 50% between 2019 and 2020.
United Health Foundation Chief Medical Officer Dr. Ravi Johar says Louisiana has a high premature death rate.
“An 18% increase and one of the biggest factors of that is the number of drug deaths ,” said Johar.
The report highlights improvements, challenges, and disparities in the health and well-being of Americans across all 50 states. Johar says the state also suffers with a high prevalence of physical inactivity with a 30% rate.
“That’s probably one of the easiest things to talk about but hard to get people to actually do, just simple things like getting out and walking for 30 minutes a day just getting out of the house and doing things of that sort,” said Johar.
Louisiana also ranks low for STD rate, high risk HIV behaviors, and 48th for teen birth. Dr. Johar says the report serves an important purpose.
“It’s to get information to the law makers and public health officials to really compare where they rank and look at what areas they want to address,” said Johar.
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