Vancouver is Canada's Healthiest City
Best Health magazine (from the people at Reader's Digest) has ranked Vancouver as the healthiest city in Canada. Vancouver ranked at the top of 5 of five of their 16 categories and was in the top 5 in 5 others. Here is what they said:
Nestled between B.C.’s Coast Mountains and the Georgia Strait, Vancouver took the top spot in five different categories, and had a top-five finish in five others. The city boasts the lowest number of overweight residents, the lowest rates of heavy drinking, the best community care, a tight smoking ban (there was a five-way tie for toughest), and is privileged to have the highest number of general and family physicians per 100,000 people.
Consistently ranked among the best of the best for its livability by organizations such as The Economist Intelligence Unit and the Mercer Quality of Life Survey, Vancouver has a lot to offer, affirms resident Alisa Smith, 36, co-author of The 100 Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating. For one, it’s not hard to find healthy food. “There are a bunch of different organic food stores and lots of farmers’ markets, and in the last two years they’ve even opened a winter market,” she says. It’s a great city for a delicious stroll, too. “I like to walk along the oceanfront to Granville Island,” says Smith. “You can buy from the fishermen at the docks. Plus, Go Fish restaurant nearby serves some of the freshest fish tacos and salmon soups that you can find.”
To come up with their findings they looked at 16 different areas of health and "went beyond the typical mortality stats to measure the comprehensiveness of smoking bans, the availability of OB/GYNs and mammography, and other issues uniquely important to Canadian women." We even did well for number of available doctors. If anyone knows a good GP in Vancouver that is taking patients let me know.
You can find the Canada’s Healthiest Cities article here and the chart of their findings here.
Matthew Collinge: Vancouver REALTOR®