Health Fitness Rankings

Guess what we are fat lazy smokers! Hooray! Oh wait, that's not a good thing..

Yesterday the American College of Sports Medicine released it's American Fitness Index of the healthiest cities in the United states, out of 50 cities Indy ranks 44th. This is actually a 8 place drop from last years 36th spot. What has lead to this new rank? The fact that we have high obesity rates, fewer park lands, fewer baseball diamonds and high chronic diseases rates including asthma and diabetes. What else led to this new lower ranking? Our high rate of smoking of course!

As discussed in earlier blog posts, states and cities reduce smoking rates through funded tobacco prevention programs, high cigarette tax rates, cessation and smoke free air laws. Here in Indiana we are falling behind on most of these efforts; our tobacco programs are poorly funded, our cigarette tax is low, our quitline is not fully funded and we do not have a comprehensive statewide smoke free air law. Also many chronic diseases are caused by smoking. So one way to increase our health ranking is to pass a smoke free air law and to fund tobacco prevention and cessation programs.

Oh and the top five healthiest cities all have comprehensive smoke free air laws in place. To read the full report please go here: http://americanfitnessindex.org/