Home to plenty of sunshine, ample opportunities for outdoor recreation, and a local culture that encourages an active lifestyle, Coloradans tend to be among some of the healthiest Americans. In fact, the state is regularly ranked as one of the healthiest in the nation, making it no surprise that some metro areas also rank highly among the country’s largest cities when it comes to health.
In a recent ranking published by WalletHub, Denver was ranked as the 10th healthiest city in the country on a list topped by San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland. Denver’s high ranking was driven by a 6th place rank in overall fitness – a data point that included factors like how many adults engage in physical activity, how many people have fitness club memberships, and a general ‘well-being’ rank.
Denver also performed fairly well when it came to local food offerings and amount of available green space, ranking 15th and 12th in those categories, respectively.
Also ranked on the list of 182 American cities were Colorado Springs and Aurora. The Springs ranked at 54th, followed closely by Aurora in 55th. Similar to Denver, both rankings were driven by high scores in physical fitness. Colorado Springs ranked 9th among the states in this category and Aurora ranked 18th.
The least healthy city included in this analysis was Brownsville, Texas, which ranked 182 of 182 in both ‘health care’ and ‘food’ categories and 181 or 182 in both’ fitness’ and ‘green space’.
Read more about WalletHub’s methodology here.