Cleveland Is The 49th Healthiest City In America

CLEVELAND, OH —Cleveland lags behind in fitness compared to other major cities in the U.S., according to a new fitness index released by the American College of Sports Medicine. The index ranks 100 American cities based on their fitness and Cleveland ranked 49 on the list.

The fittest city in the U.S. is Arlington, Virginia, according to the ACSM index. The index was calculated using 33 indicators and Arlington ranked No. 1 in “very good or excellent health” and in “low smoking rates.” The city also landed a spot in the top 10 for 11 other indicators.

The 33 indicators were divided by personal health and community/environment. The indicators were combined to create subscores for personal health and community/environment before a final score was tabulated. Personal health indicators took into account things like physical health, mental health, exercise and sleep while community/environment looked at things like how many acres of parkland was in a city.

Cleveland received a total score of 49.2. Arlington, the highest ranked city, scored 77.7. For personal health, Cleveland scored 35.7. For community/environment rank, Cleveland ranked 64.7. For comparison, Arlington scored 77.9 in personal health and 77.4 in community/environment.

However, the ACSM notes that though a city may be ranked low, it doesn’t mean that the city has low values across all the health indicators. The ACSM explains that the ranking simply indicates that relative to each other, some cities scored better than others.

You can see how Cleveland scored across all health indicators and how it compared to other cities here.

Photo from Rick Uldricks, Patch