Cedar Rapids, Iowa score high in well-being index

Area residents aren't letting their less-than-ideal jobs get them down, according to a new national study.

The Cedar Rapids area ranks first out of 185 metro areas nationwide in emotional health in the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index released this week. Cedar Rapids ranked 12th nationwide in the aggregate of five categories, finishing in the top 20 percent in every category except “work experience.”

The Des Moines metro area ranked 26th overall. The two cities' performance helped push Iowa to fifth in the nation, trailing Minnesota, Montana, Utah, and Hawaii.

Cedar Rapids' top-rated emotional health score measures “a composite of respondents' daily experiences, including laughter, happiness, worry, anger and stress.”

Local residents' only below-average score came in “work experience,” where they rated 124th. That category measures “job satisfaction, ability to use one's strengths at work, trust and openness in the workplace and whether one's supervisor treats him or her more like a boss or a partner.”

The index is based on with more than 353,000 Americans in 2009, said Gallup spokesman Eric Nielsen. Iowa City didn't make the ranking because it didn't reach the minimum requirement of 350 contacts.

“Primarily, we're asking questions about their overall well-being and physical and emotional health,” Nielsen said.

Gallup workers talk to 1,000 people nationwide each evening via both landline and cellular phones.

“(The questions are) both experiential and behavioral,” Nielsen said. “We're asking what happened to you yesterday - did you smile or laugh a lot? We're also asking about whether you smoke, have you been told by a medical professional you have a problem?”

This area's other category rankings:

Physical Health: 5 - Measures chronic diseases, sick days, physical pain, daily energy and other aspects of physical health.

Healthy behaviors: 35 - Measures smoking, consumption of fruit and vegetables and exercise.

Basic access: 4 - Measures basic needs optimal for a healthy life, such as access to food and medicine, having health insurance and feeling safe while walking at night.

The index is a joint effort by Gallup and Healthways, a Nashville-based health-risk management firm. The 25-year project began in 2008, although this year's is the first report to cover individual metro areas.

“We're trying to improve the health and well-being of the United States, but we feel that cannot be done at the national level,” Nielsen said. “It has to be much more local.”