America’s Brain Health Index, a state-by-state measure of the nation’s brain health, evaluated the 50 US states and the District of Columbia based on 21 factors, including diet, physical health, mental health and social well-being. America’s Brain Health Index is part of a national health-education campaign, Beautiful Minds: Finding Your Lifelong Potential. The campaign is designed to empower Americans to develop and maintain healthy, beautiful minds.
THE METHODOLOGY
For each brain-health indicator, data for all 51 geographies was compared to the national average, which was set at 100. Data points that were better than the national average indexed higher than 100, and data points that were poorer than the national average indexed lower than 100. After weighting the relative importance of each indicator to brain health, an overall index score was calculated for each geography. Geographies were then ranked from 1 to 51.
If you want to see how each state has progressed, held its own or lost ground in taking measures to improve brain health over the past two years, visit
beautiful-minds.com/AmericasBrainHealthIndex.
Photos with caption and credit into at the corresponding press page-http://web.mit.edu/press/2011/language-brain.html.
