PORTLAND – Maine was ranked as the nation’s eighth-healthiest state in a national report released Monday.

America’s Health Rankings is issued each year by United Health Foundation with the American Public Health Association and Partnership for Prevention. The report ranks states based on smoking rates, motor vehicle deaths, obesity rates, violent crime, health insurance coverage, poverty rates, public health spending and similar categories.

Maine was ranked in the 10th spot in the 2004 report.

Maine ranked first in the nation in 2005 for its low violent crime rate, and got high marks for health insurance coverage, prenatal care rates, infant mortality, a low rate of cardiovascular deaths and a low incidence of infectious disease. It got low marks for its high number of climate-related limited activity days, its high obesity rate and high incidence of cancer deaths.

Maine’s rate of deaths from cancer – 218.8 per 100,000 people – placed it 45th in the nation, according to the 2005 report. The national average is 203.6 per 100,000. Maine’s ranking is one notch better than last year, when it was 46th, but still troubling, according to Kip DeSerres of the Maine chapter of the American Cancer Society. DeSerres said Monday that Maine’s cancer death rates are the highest in New England.

Poverty, low levels of education, poor access to health care and the state’s historically high smoking rates are largely to blame, he said.

Lung cancer and colorectal cancer cause the most deaths in Maine, according to DeSerres, followed by breast and prostate. The good news, he said, is that youth smoking rates here have dropped dramatically.

“In 10 years, we should see a big decline in lung cancer deaths,” he predicted.

Screening for colorectal cancer is on the rise, DeSerres noted, and now is in line with the national average of about 40 percent of all adults age 50 and over. As colonoscopies and other exams become more common, more potentially deadly cancers will be caught earlier when they are more likely to be treatable, he said.

The report said Maine had experienced significant changes in the past year that were both good and bad. The prevalence of smoking declined 12 percent, but the obesity rate increased by 17 percent.

In the long term, the report said Maine’s infant mortality rate has fallen by 39 percent since 1990, and the percentage of children living in poverty has declined by 35 percent. The state’s teen pregnancy rate fell nearly 42 percent between 1991 and 2002, the report said.

Minnesota was ranked as the healthiest state, Vermont ranked second and New Hampshire third. Utah, Hawaii, North Dakota and Connecticut were rated in the four through seven spots.

Mississippi was named the least healthy state, with Louisiana, Tennessee, South Carolina and Arkansas rounding out the bottom five.

Bangor Daily News reporter Meg Haskell contributed to this report.