Virginia Health Insurance

How Healthy is your State?

The Good News

• Strengths include a low prevalence of smoking at 16.4 percent of the population
• A low violent crime rate at 256 offenses per 100.000 population
• Ready availability of primary care physicians with 125.0 primary care physicians per 100,000 population
• Few poor mental health days per month at 3.0 days in the previous 30 days.
• Virginia ranks higher for health determinants than for health outcomes, indicating that overall healthiness should improve over time.

The Challenge for Health Care in your State

• Challenges include high levels of air pollution at 12.1 micrograms of fine particulate per cubic meter
• Low immunization coverage with 73.2 percent of children ages 19 to 35 months receiving complete immunizations
• High geographic disparity within the state at 14.9 percent.

Most Recent Changes for Health Care in your State

• In the past year, the rate of preventable hospitalizations decreased from 70.2 to 64.8 discharges per 1,000 Medicare enrollees.
• In the past five years, the prevalence of smoking decreased from 22.0 percent to 16.4 percent of the population.
• Since 1990, the prevalence of obesity increased from 9.9 percent to 25.7 percent of the population.