Is South Dakota One Of The Most Healthy U.S. States?

When you consider that Sioux Falls came in 66th out of 180 cities studied, you might think- "Well that's not too bad". However, when you check out the scores it received in categories like Food, Fitness, and Green Space, you might change your mind!

Those egghead number-crunchers at WalletHub did another study on which states were the healthiest and the unhealthiest using a number of criteria to come to their conclusion.

Now the four "dimensions" as they like to refer to them were 1) Health Care, 2) Food, 3) Fitness, and 4) Green Space. Within those dimensions were many other standards they took under consideration when grading cities.

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So how did they come to these conclusions? By using a complicated numbering system. That's how.

More simply they look to statistics from a number of sources like; the U.S. Census Bureau, County Health Rankings (for each state), the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, The Gallup-Sharcare organization, The New York Times, and more. 

Under the Health Care category they examined; the quality of health systems, COVID deaths, vaccinations, family doctors, mental health counselors, and dentists -  per capita.

They also considered the health insurance situation for adults and children in each state and the efforts to provide preventative services.

In the food category, among other things, they considered the availability of healthy foods, fruit and vegetable consumption, farmer's markets, and healthy restaurants.

The fitness portion of the study looked at the number of fitness centers, weight loss centers, and even the cost of memberships to fitness facilities.

The Green Space information was gathered by examining the number of hiking, biking, and walking trails available, the number of parks, air quality, and more.

South Dakota's Health Care category ranking was very high and the Green Space ranking was very low.

I think those number-crunchers should be forced to visit every city they rank!