When it comes to a city being considered a healthy place to live, there’s clearly a lot that goes into a city’s evaluation to ensure it’s both accurate and fair.
That’s exactly why WalletHub’s 2025 study on the healthiest cities in America to live in measured over 40 unique variables to compare the 182 cities that the study intended to evaluate and rank from the healthiest city to live in to the most unhealthy.
Where did Washington, D.C., rank among the healthiest cities in America to live?
The study featured an overall rank, a total score, and various rankings across four unique dimensions: a Healthcare Rank, a Food Rank, a Fitness Rank, and a Green Space Rank.
The District managed to rank among the top 10 healthiest cities in America, earning the overall rank as the #9 healthiest city in the nation to live in!
Aside from the District’s overall rank, here’s how the District scored in the remaining sections:
- Total Score – 61.08 out of 100
- Health Care Rank – #64 in the nation
- Food Rank – #10 in the nation
- Fitness Rank – #16 in the nation
- Green Space Rank – #13 in the nation
How did this study develop its ranking?
The overall rank was determined by the total score, which in turn was calculated by adding together the points earned across all four of the dimensions we mentioned above.
The breakdown of the scoring system was as follows:
- Health Care – 25 points
- Consists of 17 unique variables
- Food – 25 points
- Consists of 9 unique variables
- Fitness – 25 points
- Consists of 7 unique variables
- Green Space – 25 points
- Consists of 8 unique variables
As you can see, the four unique dimensions all had an equal weight and were therefore all equally important to what makes a city a healthy place to live.
However, among the 41 unique variables across those four dimensions, some variables had a higher weight than others during scoring, for instance:
- In the Health Care dimension, the standard weight for each variable was 1.32 points, but one variable was triple-weighted with 3.95 points; this variable was ‘Premature-Death Rate’.