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This is Marty Carpenter of the Salt Lake Chamber with your Utah Business Report.
It's no secret that Utah is a great place to live. The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index for 2012 ranks Utah fourth overall. Our state has also been named one of the Elite Five states for well-being along with Hawaii, Minnesota, Colorado and Montana. The Elite Five have shown a sustained level of excellence over five years.
Residents of elite well-being states rate their lives as better today and expect them to be even better in the future. They have better emotional health, much lower obesity rates, carry reduced disease burden, enjoy their jobs more, and smoke less while exercising more.
Utah's largest metropolitan areas also garnered acclaim for their well-being scores. Salt Lake City earned the seventh spot in the Top Large Communities category; and the Provo-Orem region ranked third in the Top Mid-Size Communities. Metropolitan areas in the top quintile included Provo-Orem as the fourth best.
The Well-Being Index is based off of the World Health Organization definition of health, which is "not only the absence of infirmity and disease, but also a state of physical, mental and social well-being." More than 1-point-7 million people participated in the survey nationwide.
This is Marty Carpenter for KSL News Radio.
