How Healthy Is Your Town?

You know those lists? Healthiest cities. Fittest cities. Best cities for retirement. Best cities for singles. If MEmory serves me, the sole list my town has appeared on was one thing concerning cities with the foremost overweight individuals. Not exactly a great claim to fame.

recently discharged its list of the highest ten Healthiest Cities for 2015, and, once again, my city, Norfolk, VA, is not anyplace to be found. The lucky, healthy folks live in:

1. Minneapolis, MN
2. Cambridge, MA
3. Madison, WI
4. Miami, FL
5. Bridgeport, CT
6. Arlington, VA
7. Santa Ana, CA
8. Honolulu, HI
9. Fort Collins, CO
10. Yonkers, NY

looks at what makes tiny to mid-sized cities nice places to measure, work and visit. Its healthiest cities rankings were supported access to quality, cheap health care and healthy lifestyles promoted through infrastructure and amenities. In different words, these ten cities did an excellent job providing residents with exercise opportunities, smart food decisions and robust support networks to assist live healthy lives.

My town and region conjointly give healthiness care, with many prestigious hospital systems and a neighborhood school of medicine. And, living in a very fairly temperate region of the South, we’ve got lots of access to fitness opportunities: AN ocean and a bay for seasonal swimming or sailing; lakes and rivers for canoeing, kayaking and other water sports; and all kinds of gyms and fitness studios. Our area also probably ranks pretty well on parks, though maybe not so well on hiking and biking trails.

Truth is, I sleep in AN previous urban town, and it will be laborious to retrofit our infrastructure to accommodate bike ways or to place a giant ballpark within the middle of our city. Our parks, tho’ plentiful, area unit largely smaller inner-city parks, however they are nice for taking your children to the playground, strolling around on a sunny day or joining a pickup game of basketball or football, if you are thus inclined. In addition, we’ve got an exquisite facility and a facility, where my husband and I take longs walks on the weekends. And we have miles and miles of sidewalks, appropriate for walking or cardiopulmonary exercise through our city’s neighborhoods. We even have some pretty sweet boardwalks and seawalls, if you want to walk by the water.

We might not have the best choice of farmers markets and recent farm-to-table foods, but we have some—and the options are increasing.

I suspect wherever we tend to let down is on the equal-opportunity-for-all aspect of the equation, because much of my city lives on the lower end of the economic scale. The food, exercise and health care choices might not be promptly accessible to all or any.

Many cities lately area unit stepping up their game in terms of encouraging a healthy fashion. I’m confident my city could do more, but I also can do a better job of utilizing the opportunities I have.

I will take longer and additional frequent walks through a number of our pretty previous neighborhoods. I can pump up my bike tires and ride to the grocery. I can go to the bay and swim in the summer. I will hit some court game balls on the neighborhood courts rather than looking TV within the evenings.