34 Illinois Counties Rank Among Nation's Healthiest: U.S. News Report

ILLINOIS — Traveling outside of the greater Chicago area to explore other parts of Illinois may be on the summer bucket list for local residents, but according to a new report, the downstate area may be among the healthiest locales across the state.

Only one suburban Chicago county — DuPage — ranked among the top performing 500 urban areas in the country, according to a new ranking by U.S. News & World Report released Wednesday.

The fifth annual report, in collaboration with CVS Health, highlights the healthiest 500 counties in the United States.

DuPage County ranked 55th overall in the top-performing urban areas in the U.S. according to the report, which categorized the counties by population. Monroe County was the only other Illinois urban county to rank in the Top 100, according to the report.

To rank the counties, U.S. News looked at how nearly 3,000 U.S. counties performed in 89 metrics across 10 health-related categories, including an environmental category new to this year’s list. The new category was included to help account for the growing threat of climate change.

The categories are based on factors key to evaluating community health identified by the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics — a policy advisory board to the head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — as part of its Measurement Framework for Community Health and Well-Being.

U.S. News collected data for its rankings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Census Bureau, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, among others.

Read more about the rankings’ methodology.

Using data on natural disasters from the National Risk Index by FEMA — the Federal Emergency Management Agency — U.S. News found in this year’s analysis that Indigenous people are at the greatest risk from natural hazards. They have higher risks from sustained periods of colder temperatures, droughts, flooding in rivers and streams and wildfires compared with other racial and ethnic groups, the analysis showed.

Black people are more at risk from heat waves, hurricanes, tornadoes and coastal flooding than any other demographic group, according to the analysis, and earthquakes pose the highest risk to Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders.

Tornadoes pose the highest risk to the overall population in the United States and are a particular threat to white, Black and Hispanic populations, the analysis found.

The ranking also revealed connections between top performers on the list and COVID-19 health outcomes. Communities with higher cumulative COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 people have lower rates of postsecondary education, lower life expectancy and lower shares of adults who have recently engaged in leisure-time physical activity, the analysis showed. Communities with higher vaccination rates also had lower rates of death due to COVID-19.

These are the top 10 healthiest communities in the United States, according to the ranking:

1. Los Alamos County, New Mexico
2. Falls Church, Virginia
3. Douglas County, Colorado
4. Morgan County, Utah
5. Carver County, Minnesota
6. Sioux County, Iowa
7. Ozaukee County, Wisconsin
8. Hamilton County, Indiana
9. Broomfield County, Colorado
10. Delaware County, Ohio

U.S. News also ranked several subgroups of communities including high-performing and up-and-coming urban communities, as well as high-performing and up-and-coming rural communities.

Here’s how Illinois ranked by category as 34 counties across the state earned a spot in the rankings.

Top-Performing Urban Counties

55. DuPage County

61. Monroe County

161. Woodford County

167. Kendall County

173. Platt County

219. McHenry County

281. Lake County

373. Clinton County

388. Tazewell County

415. Grundy County

434. Putnam County

465. Kane County

487. Washington County

491. Will County

492. McLean County

493. Henry County

499. McHenry County

Urban Up and Coming Counties

7. Putnam County

28. Mercer County

29. Ford County

30. Bureau County

38. Logan County

48. La Salle County

67. Christian County

68. Marshall County

90. Livingston County

98. Williamson County

Rural Up and Coming Counties

10. Union County

23. Edgar County

28. Lincoln County

29. Johnson County

34. Wayne County

39. Mason County

42. Perry County

46. Montgomery County

50. White County

83. Saline County

88. Fayette County

96. Lawrence County