America's Healthiest Cities

SELF looked at 100 metro areas to find the towns that are smartest about staying well. Follow their advice to be your healthiest, too!

Keep America Beautiful (KAB.org) helps communities get cleaner.

We have good news, and we have better news. The good news is that U.S. cities are doing more than ever to help women be their best: building parks and paths, expanding insurance, banning smoking. In this, SELF's 8th annual survey of the Best Places for Women, we crunched more than 6,000 bits of data in 50-plus categories to find the happiest and healthiest women around. The better news? We've got just-for-you advice on how to join their ranks. No matter where you live, you can live healthy—that's the best news of all.

Healthiest. SAN FRANCISCO, CA The first thing to know about San Francisco is that its residents love being first. In the past year, it became the first U.S. city to guarantee care to the uninsured, to ban plastic bags in large grocery stores, even the first to convert its recycling facility to run partly on solar power.

Women here rave about walkable neighborhoods, plentiful, scenic trails and offices that encourage exercise breaks. "I've lost 15 pounds since moving here without even trying," says Stacy Wanless, 24, an assistant account executive at a public relations firm. "Instead of the social scene centering around drinking or eating, friends get together to go for a hike or run, take a ski trip or make a bonfire on the beach."

Residents enjoy clean air and water and have access to nearly twice as many ob/gyns and three times more psychiatrists per capita than average. More than 93 percent of women are insured, and by January, those who aren't will be eligible for free care under the new universal health care plan. Odds are, your hometown is watching to see how it works—and benefiting once again from San Francisco's path-forging ways.

RUNNERS-UP

2 Nassau-Suffolk counties, NY

3 San Jose, CA

4 Honolulu, HI

5 Burlington, VT

Unhealthiest. GARY, IN Founded in 1906 by U.S. Steel, this industrial area south of Chicago has long struggled with its environment. "All you have to do is drive along the Indiana Toll Road and you can see the haze floating over the whole area," says Mariann Pittman, 47, a cabinetry designer in Valparaiso, Indiana. Up to 400 illegal dump sites blight the region, and earlier this year the local BP oil refinery got the green light to pump an additional 1,833 pounds of pollutants a day into Lake Michigan.

Women here report feeling depressed at least four days a month, more than one in five of them smoke and they are 13 percent more likely to die of cancer than the average woman in our survey. Help is on the way: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has pledged to clean up polluted waterways, and a National Institutes of Health program is tackling sky-high obesity rates. This summer, after protests over BP's water pollution permits, the company volunteered to stick to previous limits. "On the street, people are asking questions about this issue," says Ellen Szarleta-Yancy, Ph.D., assistant professor at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University North-west in Gary. "That's a very good thing."

RUNNERS-UP

2 Detroit, MI

3 Cincinnati, OH

4 Oklahoma City, OK

5 Columbus, OH

American Red Cross (RedCross.org) works to prepare communities for emergencies and keep people safe.