How well and how long you live are shaped by where you live. Local health outcomes are often driven by factors like a community’s economic performance, the strength of its education system, the availability and affordability of housing and myriad other elements that affect residents’ overall quality of life.

Knowing how such factors interact to create a healthier community – or a sicker one – is an important first step toward targeting resources where they'll do the most good. And geography offers a powerful lens through which to focus reform.

The U.S. News Healthiest Communities rankings measure crucial health-related components of society with the aim of empowering citizens, health care leaders and officials to make decisions about policies and practices that can improve health outcomes for all. Guided by a pioneering framework developed by a committee appointed to advise the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the project scores nearly 3,000 counties on approximately 80 indicators across 10 categories that drive health outcomes. Population health and equity are the most heavily weighted categories, based on the assessments of more than a dozen leading experts on what matters most to a community’s health.

Below are the 2018 rankings of the top 500 Healthiest Communities nationwide, and how they scored across each of the 10 categories on a scale of zero to 100.