US Counties With the Lowest Health Scores

2,956 US counties ranked by health score, from lowest to highest. First are Kusilvak Census Area, AK (-3.31), Oglala Lakota County, SD (-3.05) and Todd County, SD (-2.84). The middle one of the 2,956 has -0.0304.

What this measures

One number for a county's health. It averages illness, health habits, preventive care and death rates, each put on the same scale and turned so higher is better. Twenty-six of its thirty measures are CDC PLACES estimates from a statistical model. So measures are averaged within each publisher first, and PLACES counts once, not twenty-six times. Source: .

A standard deviation is a typical gap between places.

For most measures, a national ranking mostly sorts places by income and by how urban they are. Each county’s own page compares it with the 50 counties most like it instead, which is often the fairer view.

The 100 lowest counties

Every state, lowest first

Each state’s own published figure, not an average of its counties.

More on health score

• US Counties With the Highest Health Scores
• Health score by US county: map by year and what it goes with

A ranking describes places, not the people in them, and a high or low place does not by itself say why. All US rankings.