WELL-BEING: Hawai’i Ranks #1…Again

Among all 50 states, Hawai’i ranks #1 Overall for 2009.  

Interestingly, within the State of Hawai’i, rural Congressional District 2 (which includes Maui County) ranked higher than it’s urban Congressional district 1 (City and County of Honolulu) in only one category, ‘Life Evaluation’. 

Of note is the positive change  in Hawai’i’s ranking in the ‘Work Environment’ Index from #50 in 2008, to #5 in 2009. 

Maintaining it’s 2008 #1 position in both ‘Emotional Health’ and in ‘Life Evaluation’  Hawai’i’s 2009 ranking improved adding #1 in ‘Physical Health’ and moving into the top spot of  ‘Well-Being Overall.’

Implemented in January, 2008, the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index is the first and largest survey of its kind. It is the official statistic for Well-Being in America, giving a daily measure of people’s comfort level at the close of every day. It is based on the World Health Organization (WHO) definition of health as not only the absence of infirmity and disease but also a state of physical, mental and social well-being. The Well-Being Index is already the largest behavioral economic database ever created and, over the next quarter century, will generate more than nine million individual responses.

The index includes six sub-indexes:

Life Evaluation: A self-evaluation of two items—(1) present life situation and (2) anticipated life situation five years from now.

HAWAI’I #1 (#1 in 2008) 

Physical Health: Includes nine items—sick days in past month, disease burden, health problems that get in the way of normal activities, obesity, feeling well-rested, daily energy, daily colds, daily flu, and daily headaches.

HAWAI’I #1 ( #3 in 2008)

Emotional Health: Includes 10 items—smiling or laughter, learning or doing something interesting, being treated with respect, enjoyment, happiness, worry, sadness, anger,  stress, and diagnosis of depression.

HAWAI’I #1 (#1 in 2008)

Healthy Behavior: Includes four items—smoking, eating healthy, weekly consumption of fruits and vegetables, and weekly exercise frequency.

HAWAI’I #2 (#4 in 2008)

Work Environment: Includes four items—job satisfaction, ability to use one’s strengths at work, supervisor’s treatment (more like a boss or a partner), and whether it is an open and trusting work environment.

HAWAI’I #5 (#50 in 2008)

Basic Access: Includes 13 items—access to clean water, medicine, safe place to exercise, affordable fruits and vegetables; enough money for food, shelter, healthcare; have health insurance, have a doctor, have visited a dentist recently; satisfaction with the community, the community getting better as a place to live, feeling safe walking alone at night.

HAWAI’I #9 ( #9 in 2008)

Further information: http://www.well-beingindex.com/files/2010WBIrankings/HI_StateReport.pdf