Georgia city among unhealthiest cities in America, study says

Augusta is one of the unhealthiest cities in the country, according to a recent analysis from personal finance website WalletHub.

» RELATED: Your guide to health care in Georgia

For the 2018 analysis of the healthiest and unhealthiest cities in America, analysts compared 174 cities, including the 150 most populated ones in the U.S., across four key dimensions: health care, food, fitness and green space.

They evaluated the dimensions using 40 relevant metrics, including cost of medical visits, quality of public hospital systems, fruit and vegetable consumption, dietitians per capita, gyms per capita, hiking trails and more.

» RELATED: This is the US county that buys the least healthy groceries

WalletHub’s sample considered only the city proper in each case and excluded any cities in the surrounding metro area. Due to data limitations, WalletHub did not include the following in their analysis: Dover, Delaware; Lewiston, Maine; Bismarck, North Dakota; South Burlington, Vermont; Juneau, Alaska; Pearl City, Hawaii; Columbia, Maryland and Casper, Wyoming.

According to the analysis, San Francisco earned top honors as the healthiest city in the country, followed by Seattle and Portland.

Brownsville, Texas, ranked dead last overall and in the health care and food dimensions.

And Augusta ranked third worst overall. Here’s more on how the city fared:

Augusta wasn’t the only Georgia city on the list. Columbus ranked 158th. Unlike those two low ranked cities, Atlanta was recognized as one of the healthiest cities, coming in at No. 26 overall.

Here are the top five healthiest cities in America, according to WalletHub:

And the five unhealthiest:

More on the study and its methodology at WalletHub.com.