In Brief: How Healthy is Your City?

For the third year in a row, Minneapolis-St. Paul ranks as the healthiest, fittest metropolitan area in the United States, according to an annual survey by the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM).

The Washington, DC, Portland, San Francisco, and Denver metropolitan areas rounded out the top five among the 50 most populous metro areas in the United States.

For the rankings, survey researchers gathered data on both people’s health behaviors and environmental indicators. Personal health indicators included how much people exercised, smoking, deaths from chronic diseases, and obesity rates. Environmental indicators of good health included the numbers of recreational centers, parks, tennis courts and farmer’s markets.

Researchers analyzed data from a variety of sources, including the US Census, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, and The Trust for the Public Land City Park Facts.

You can see how your metro area ranked for fitness and for each of the health indicators online at the ACSM’s American Fitness Index.

American College of Sports Medicine’s (ACSM) annual American Fitness Index. “Health and Community Fitness Status of the 50 Largest Metropolitan Areas.” May 23, 2013.