Don’t mean to be a downer right before the holidays, but West Virginia Public Broadcasting had an interesting story on a survey that could be seen as a wake-up call for the state’s politicians and other policy makers.

Emily Corio of WVPBS reports that the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index telephone survey showed that West Virginians “have the overall lowest ranking when asked about their physical and emotional health, job satisfaction and access to basic needs.”

The survey included questions in six categories. In all categories except job satisfaction, West Virginians’ responses were lower than all or most other states.

Utah ranked highest in the well-being index.

West Virginia University’s  Dr. Alan Ducatman, who specializes in community medicine, told the radio station that states with strong public-education systems usually do best in health and well-being studies.

“If our goal is to do better and it ought to be, we should be thinking about policies for our state that can help us do better and we should also be thinking about things that we as individuals can do better,” he said.

Those could include “policies that promote walking and biking for transportation instead of relying on vehicles as well as policies that dissuade people from smoking, drinking soda and eating junk food,” the story says.

Earlier this year, a federal report showed that West Virginians also have the highest rate of “serious psychological distress.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 25, 2009 at 5:53 pm and is filed under Health care. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.