Talk about an overachieving state.

It wasn’t enough for Minnesota to tout 11,000 lakes and one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation.

This Midwestern wonder has earned the rank of overall best state for dental health in the U.S. for the second year, according to analytics by WalletHub.

What’s Minnesota’s secret?

Perhaps some of its other areas of recognition in this assessment will shed some light:

  • Minnesota tied for No. 1 with Hawaii and Illinois as the state with the lowest percentage of adults with poor or fair oral condition

  • Minnesota ranks No. 4 in states with the highest percentage of adults who visited a dentist in the past year

Where does your state rank?

Is your state among the lowest or highest for dental treatment costs?

Is it the lowest or highest among sugar-sweetened beverage consumption?

Does it feature the most or fewest dentists per capita?

Find out these answers and more. Visit: https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-best-worst-dental-health/31498/#main-findings

How did WalletHub establish the rankings?

Glad you asked.

“In order to determine the places with the best dental health in the U.S., WalletHub compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia across two key dimensions, Dental Habits & Health and Oral Health.

We examined those dimensions using 25 relevant metrics, which are listed below with their corresponding weights. Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the most favorable conditions for dental health.

We then determined each state and the District’s weighted average across all metrics to calculate its overall score and used the resulting scores to rank-order our sample.”

Mary Otto, a Washington, D.C.-based freelancer, the Association of Health Care Journalists’ topic leader on oral health, and the author of “Teeth: The Story of Beauty, Inequality, and the Struggle for Oral Health in America” recently gained insights on the report from WalletHub analyst Jill Gonzalez.

Read that interview here: https://healthjournalism.org/blog/2018/03/consumer-site-taps-data-to-estimate-which-states-have-healthiest-teeth-and-gums/#more-32712