The East Coast leads the nation when it comes to costs, quality and access to children's healthcare, while southern states fall behind.
The new ranking comes from Wallethub, which compared 33 indicators in the categories of access (55 points), nutrition and physical activity (40 points) and oral health (five points).
Wallethub compared the measures of care cost, quality and access for the 50 states and District of Columbia to determine each state's weighted average for each measure, calculate an overall score and rank-order the states. Measures include infant and child mortality rates, pediatricians and family physicians per capita, children's hospitals per total number of children, dietitians and nutritionists per capita, healthy food access and more.
Below are the top 15 and bottom 15 states and their total scores from the ranking, which can be found in full here.
The best
1. Massachusetts: 66.26
2. District of Columbia: 65.45
3. Rhode Island: 65.04
4. Vermont: 64.83
5. Hawaii: 63.47
6. New York: 62.62
7. Maryland: 61.32
8. New Jersey: 60.62
9. Oregon: 58.83
10. Minnesota: 58.66
11. Connecticut: 58.61
12. Delaware: 57.74
13. Pennsylvania: 57.40
14. Iowa: 57.39
15. Washington: 57.15
The worst
37. South Carolina: 49.03
38. North Carolina: 48.59
39. Alaska: 48.18
40. Arizona: 48.09
41. Nevada: 48.05
42. New Mexico: 47.87
43. Arkansas: 47.54
44. Oklahoma: 45.93
45. Kentucky: 45.45
46. West Virginia: 45.16
47. Indiana: 45.06
48. Wyoming: 44.26
49. Louisiana: 43.96
50. Texas: 41.52
51. Mississippi: 39.58