How Fat Is Lower Providence?

By Justin Heinze:

Pennsylvania is the 18th most obese state in the United States and has a below average sense of purpose and community, according to a recent study by Gallup.

And of the nation’s 100 most populous areas, the Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington metropolitan area, including Montgomery County, was ranked 74th for overall well-being.

The Well-Being Index measured five key standards: purpose, social, financial, community, and physical. As a state, Pennsylvania ranked 35th in well-being.

For the individual measurements, the state’s lowest placing was ”purpose,” for which they ranked 42nd.

The study’s authors defined purpose as “liking what you do each day and being motivated to achieve your goals.”

Pennsylvania was 36th in community and 34th in physical, but received slightly better scores in social and financial, ranking 22nd and 17th, respectively.

The study was based on interviews with 176,702 American adults throughout the course of 2014.

Study authors cited the importance of such research across disciplines.

“Researchers, policy makers, and health care leaders need good information about the well-being of populations they serve,” said David Nash, MD, the Dean of the Jefferson School of Population Health in the study. “Well-being sheds light on the issues that drive quality, cost, and productivity. A well-being metric also supports the creation of an action plan for our nation, in order to achieve sustained improvement in the health of our citizens.”

Hawaii topped the list as the least obese state, while urban Honolulu also placed second overall in the well-being list. The most obese state was Mississippi, and the Greenville-Mauldin-Anderson metropolitan area was the worst for well-being, according to the Index.

A map of the nation’s obesity results, shown in the second image above, shows a region extending from Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi up to Michigan that includes states that are all among the most obese.

Most western states scored highly on the well-being index and were among the least obese areas, along with Virginia, North Carolina, and Maine.