Salt Lake City is the sixth healthiest city in America, according to a new study by the personal finance research website Nerdwallet. But what makes it so?
The two metrics that most impressed Nerdwallet (they looked at six indicators overall) were Salt Lake's love of fitness and the unusually high number of physicians per capita. "Much like Denver," Nerdwallet's Sreekar Jasthi wrote, "Salt Lake City has plenty of options for avid fans of winter sports." All that skiing isn't for naught.
But Utah's culture of health extends far beyond just winter sports and lots of doctors. According to the most recent "American Human Development Report" from the Social Science Research Council, Utah's average life expectancy is close to two years more than the average American. Add to that, only 9.2 percent of children in Utah live in poverty, according to the United Health Foundation, which is the lowest rate in the nation.
The UHF also says that Utah has the lowest rate of smokers, the second lowest rate of preventable hospitalizations, the third lowest rate of excessive drinking and the fourth lowest rate of obesity.
Utah also has the lowest rate of cancer deaths, likely due in part to the low rate of smokers, as well as the presence of a nationally renowned cancer treatment center at the University of Utah.
Utah does, however, have some snags. According to the UHF, Utah ranks 39th in air pollution and 44th in adolescent immunization.
As KSL.com's Wendy Leonard wrote in December, adolescent immunization and air pollution are two of the major issues keeping Utah from achieving a higher status as one of the country's healthiest states.
In fact, as Leonard reported in 2012, low immunization rates among adolescence led to "the highest incidence of (whooping cough) in the state since 1946."
Another area of concern over the years has been Utah's unusually high rate of suicides and prescription drug overdoses, but while some have pointed to cultural pressures as the primary culprit of these preventable tragedies, University of Utah neuroscientist Perry Renshaw thinks Utah's high elevation has a major impact on depression rates, something highlighted last November by Policy Mic's Theresa Fisher. In other words, the same mountainous environment that encourages so much healthy outdoor activity may also be the cause of what Fisher calls "a suicide epidemic."
And as The Deseret News' Amy Joi O'Donoghue reported in June of 2013, Utah's pollution problem — which is exacerbated in the Salt Lake Valley because of "reverse air patterns" due to the surrounding mountains, leading to air inversion — may be a major factor in Utah's high rate of children born with autism.
But even with the apparent setbacks, Utah's reputation as a healthy state remains persistent. Provo was named last year as one of the 10 healthiest places to live in America by Time magazine, and Salt Lake CIty has received similar honors in recent years from The Travel Channel, Forbes and USA Today.
JJ Feinauer is a Web producer for Moneywise and Opinion on DeseretNews.com. Email: jfeinauer@deseretdigital.com, Twitter: jjfeinauer.