Health Outcomes
High Blood Pressure by County — US Rankings
CDC PLACES 2023 · Age-adjusted prevalence · All 3,144 US counties
Hypertension — adults told by a doctor they have high blood pressure — is the single most consequential cardiovascular risk factor the CDC tracks at the county level. PLACES estimates are modeled from BRFSS survey responses, so they reflect diagnosed hypertension, not undiagnosed cases. That matters: counties with better primary care access often look "worse" on this measure simply because more residents have been diagnosed. The age-adjusted rate strips out differences in population age, but it cannot strip out differences in screening rates. Read the rankings alongside the cholesterol-screening and annual-checkup rankings to see whether high prevalence reflects disease or access.
How this ranking is built
Source: CDC PLACES 2023 release. Methodology: BRFSS survey responses pooled across years, fitted with a small-area statistical model, age-adjusted to the 2000 US standard population. Confidence intervals (95%) are shown for each county — wider intervals indicate more uncertainty in the modeled estimate, typically driven by smaller populations.
Lowest High Blood Pressure Rates — Top 100 Counties
Counties with the lowest reported high blood pressure prevalence — these counties show the most favorable position on this measure.
Best 100 counties for High Blood Pressure.
Highest High Blood Pressure Rates — Bottom 100 CountiesCounties with the highest reported high blood pressure prevalence.
Worst 100 counties for High Blood Pressure.
What this ranking suggests
High blood pressure prevalence is most useful when paired with treatment-rate data: the BPMED measure tracks whether diagnosed adults are taking medication for it. A county can have high hypertension prevalence and high BPMED uptake and still be doing well; the inverse is what to watch for.
Methodology notes & limitations
Estimates are statistical model outputs, not direct measurements. Small counties have wider confidence intervals; treat narrow rank differences in those rows as within-noise. Counties where the underlying population is too small to support modeling are suppressed entirely (about 1% of US counties). All measures are age-adjusted to the 2000 US standard population. The PLACES dataset uses BRFSS self-reported data — self-report introduces known direction-of-bias in some measures (BMI is under-reported; binge drinking is under-reported), but the bias is roughly uniform across counties so ranking comparability is preserved. See the methodology page for full data-pipeline documentation.
Data source: CDC PLACES 2023 release. Measure ID: BPHIGH.