Philly Ranks 25th Out of 50 Fittest Cities

Yup, we're exactly in the middle, people. Here's how we can improve our fit score.

Another day, another health ranking, am I right?

Here’s the latest: For the past several years, the American Fitness Index has published an annual report that scores the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S. based on a variety of personal and community health indicators. We’re all about health and wellness here at Be Well, so we were particularly excited to see how Philly measured up this year.

In case you’re wondering, we scored a 51.2, landing us squarely in the middle at #25. What does this mean? For comparison, Minneapolis, which is apparently a pretty physically active city with low rates of heart disease, came in at the number one spot with a score of 78.2. Other highly ranked cities include Washington, DC (#2), Portland (#3), and San Francisco (#4).

Overall, Philly can be proud of some of its infrastructure dedicated to health and wellness. For example, we achieved “excellence” in categories such as percentage of city land as parkland and number of farmers’ markets per capita. Thanks to our commuters who walk and ride their bikes to work every day, we also did well in this category. And surprise, surprise, this city is swimming with healthcare providers, which bumps up our score, too.

Even still—and here comes the bad news, folks—the people of Philadelphia are all around sicker than many of our other urban counterparts, with higher rates of asthma, obesity and diabetes. And as we are all too well aware, Philly also has a high percentage smokers, which may account for the worse personal health statistics.

For the full report, and to see how we stack up to other cities, go here.