The moving and shaking going on in San Francisco isn’t just about earthquakes and politics, it’s also about exercise. On May 29, 2008, San Francisco was crowned the “Fittest of America’s Most Populous Metropolitan Areas” by the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM). The ACSM, in association with the WellPoint Foundation, recently concluded a study which measured region-wide physical activity and created an “American Fitness Index” (AFI) to score the results. The 15 most populated metropolitan areas in the nation, plus Greater Indianapolis (the home base of ACSM and WellPoint), participated in the program and received rankings at the end of the research. San Francisco edged out Seattle for first place with an AFI of 403 to 401. Detroit, Los Angeles, and Houston, ranked at the bottom with AFI’s of 149, 208 and 209, respectively.

So what does the AFI measure and mean? The ACSM realized that if personal fitness could be quantified, than why not community fitness. Certainly, it would be helpful if metropolitan areas could look at strengths and weakness in their overall fitness and see where they were in and out of shape. To this end, the ACSM gathered data from each metropolitan area for indicators of personal health, community resources for physical activity, and availability of health care providers. The indicators in each category were given a score which, when combined with the others, resulted in an AFI for the region

For example, San Francisco received its #1 ranking, in part, because more people engage regularly in moderate exercise and eat their daily servings of fruits and vegetables, there are relatively more acres of parkland, and there is a higher rate of health insurance coverage and primary care providers per capita. Detroit, on the other hand, received its last place ranking partially because there are fewer people who exercise regularly, more people who smoke, have diabetes and die from cardiovascular disease, and there is a greater scarcity of parkland acreage and health care providers per capita. By making this type of information readily accessible to the public and regional policy makers, the goal of the program is to encourage changes that will increase physical activity and improve overall health in some of the most populous metropolitan areas in the nation.

If you want to know how your city compares, then check the complete results of the study at www.AmericanFitnessIndex.org. The results provide a specific breakdown of strengths and challenges to community fitness for each metropolitan area. A look at the data shows that while Detroit and Los Angeles may have a longer way to go, even cities like San Francisco and Seattle have specific steps they can take to improve community fitness. The ACSM plans to expand its program to include the 50 largest cities in the United States and provide yearly updates to the AFI rankings so that cities can measure their progress.