Graphic of the week: Ohio spends less than recommended on tobacco prevention

Data included in HPIO’s 2026 Health Value Dashboard shows that Ohio falls behind other states in its tobacco prevention funding. While adult smoking rates have decreased over the past 10 years, Ohio has a higher adult smoking rate than most other states, and substantial disparities remain. Ohio ranks 43rd (eighth from the bottom) on tobacco prevention and cessation funding, compared to the other 49 states and D.C. Ohio spends just 8% of what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend to reduce smoking, as illustrated above.
 
The Dashboard found that Ohio ranks in the bottom half of states on public health and prevention, which supports community health and emergency preparedness. While Ohio’s performance across the metrics of this domain has improved since the earliest editions of the Dashboard, the state continues to fall behind other states on measures of health promotion and prevention and ranks very low on emergency preparedness and public health surveillance. 
 
The Health Value Dashboardis a collection of tools and resources that compare Ohio’s performance to all other states on a wide range of measures of population health, healthcare spending and the factors that influence health, including:

• Access to care
• The healthcare system
• Public health and prevention
• The social and economic environment
• The physical environment