Healthiest Cities: Where El Paso and Other Texas Cities Rank

There is a new study out from WalletHub ranking the healthiest cities in the country and it turns out I had to scroll for a little while in order to find El Paso.

Translation: not great.

But shouldn’t El Paso get a bit of a break since its Mexican food scene is so good? I think so.

WalletHub’s list of 2023 healthiest and unhealthiest cities “compared more than 180 of the most populated U.S. cities across 43 key indicators of good health.”

Link: https://wallethub.com/edu/healthiest-cities/31072

Those 43 key indicators are pretty wide-ranging, from cost of medical visits to fruit and vegetable consumption and even the percentage of residents who are fully vaccinated (something El Paso did very well in nationally during the pandemic).

Now, to the list.

It may or may not surprise you there are no Texas cities in the top 10 when it comes to healthiest cities. The first city in the Lone Star State is Austin at No. 14. The next one is Plano all the way at No. 43. The top three are San Francisco, CA, Seattle, WA and Honolulu, HI.

So what about El Paso? Drumroll … it’s all the way at No. 139. Not so great, but not as bad as its neighbor up I-10. Las Cruces, NM came in at No. 161.

Here are some of the cities of local and regional interest:

So, yeah... El Paso could be doing better.

But the good news is that the city does have this initiative called Move El Paso to promote wellness: https://www.elpasotexas.gov/public-health/special-projects/move-el-paso/

Cheers to good health!