Health
See also: List of hospitals in Massachusetts, Massachusetts health care reform, and Governorship of Mitt Romney#Health careMassachusetts generally ranks highly among states in most health and disease prevention categories. In 2009, the United Health Foundation ranked the state as third healthiest overall. However, the study also pointed to several areas in which Massachusetts ranked below average, such as the state's rate of binge drinking, which was the 11th highest in the country. Massachusetts has the most doctors per 100,000 residents, the second lowest infant mortality rate, and the lowest percentage of uninsured residents (for both children as well as the total population). According to Businessweek, commonwealth residents have an average life expectancy of 78.4 years, the fifth longest in the country. 37.2% of the population is overweight and 21.7% is obese, and Massachusetts ranks sixth highest in the percentage of residents who are considered neither obese nor overweight (41.1%).
The nation's first Marine Hospital was erected by federal order in Boston in 1799. The Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine lists a total of 132 hospitals in the state. According to rankings by US News & World Report, Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston is the third best overall hospital in the nation; the hospital also ranked first in psychiatry. Massachusetts General was founded in 1811 and serves as the largest teaching hospital for nearby Harvard University.
Other teaching and medical institutions affiliated with Harvard include Brigham and Women's Hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, among others. Boston is also the location of New England Baptist Hospital, Tufts Medical Center and Boston Medical Center, the latter of which is the primary teaching hospital for Boston University. The University of Massachusetts Medical School is located in Worcester. The Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences has campuses in both Boston and Worcester.
Read more about this topic: Economy Of Massachusetts
Famous quotes containing the word health:
“The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Nothing in Nature’s sober found,
But an eternal health goes round.
Fill up the bowl, then, fill it high,
Fill all the glasses there—for why
Should every creature drink but I?
Why, man of morals, tell me why?”
—Abraham Cowley (1618–1667)
“Our young people are diseased with the theological problems of original sin, origin of evil, predestination, and the like. These never presented a practical difficulty to any man,—never darkened across any man’s road, who did not go out of his way to seek them. These are the soul’s mumps, and measles, and whooping- coughs, and those who have not caught them cannot describe their health or prescribe a cure. A simple mind will not know these enemies.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)