If you’re into health, this is the area for you. The City of Falls Church takes the top spot as the country’s “healthiest community,” just two weeks after Arlington held fast to its title as fittest city.
This is the second time Falls Church has been ranked No. 1 on U.S. News & World Report’s Healthiest Communities study. The first win came in 2018, the study’s first year. Falls Church was No. 2 in the most recent ranking, in 2022.
The study evaluates the performance of about 2,800 communities nationwide based on 92 health-related metrics. Communities are ranked based on how they serve residents in 10 main categories, including: Population Health, Education and Food and Nutrition. The top 500 counties receive a ranking. Â
“In the 2024 Healthiest Communities rankings, we like to say consistency is key, and Falls Church was able to demonstrate success in a wide variety of ways,” U.S. News Data Editor Julia Haines said in an email to Arlington Magazine. “The county landed in the top 10 for some of our heaviest-weighted categories—Population Health (No. 4), Education (No. 1) and Economy (No. 6). Those categories, paired with impressive performances in the Food & Nutrition and Infrastructure categories as well, helped to land the [city] at the top of the overall list.”
In addition to achieving the highest overall score, the Little City was in the top 20 in five categories, including No. 1 for Education, No. 4 for Population Health and No. 6 for Economy. It also has the lowest disparity in neighborhood poverty.
The city, which is just a smidge bigger than 2 square miles, also got strong marks for safe drinking water, widespread internet access, walkability, having a large percentage of the population with advanced educational degrees, and low rates of heart disease and vehicle crash fatalities.
Falls Church did not score as well in Equity and Housing, however. “Our data indicates that 27% of households in Falls Church are cost-burdened, meaning that they spend 30% or more of their income on housing, compared to closer to an average 23% for counties nationally,” Haines says. “Falls Church also falls into the bottom half of all counties for metrics like Work Hours Needed to Pay for Affordable Housing and Share of Overcrowded Households.”
Communities that do well in this category have affordable housing, low eviction rates and little to no overcrowding, she adds.
Equity was another weake spot for Falls Church. The category looks at disparities between race/ethnicity, gender and disability status when it comes to metrics like poverty rates and labor force participation. Falls Church “has one of the worst scores for racial disparity in educational attainment in the country, and also falls short of success on metrics like premature death disparity, low birth weight disparity and racial disparity in poverty,” Haines says.
Equity is a challenge nationwide, she notes. To close gaps, “the first step could be to look into why those disparities exist and have leaders and policymakers take action to better promote equity in their communities,” Haines says.
Falls Church unseats Los Alamos County, New Mexico, which had been No. 1 in the past three rankings. It fell to second place this year, with Colorado’s Douglas County rounding out the top three.
Falls Church may be the healthiest of all, but neighboring communities aren’t too shabby either. Arlington came in 19th, while Fairfax County nabbed No. 14 and Fairfax City No. 15. Within the individual categories, Arlington took third place for Population Health and fifth for Health Outcomes, while Fairfax County came in first for Population Health and third for Mental Health. Nearby Alexandria city came in second for Public Safety, while Manassas Park took second for Equity.
Manassas Park’s equity score is notable, considering that in nearly 98% of counties nationwide, female workers earn less than their male counterparts, according to the study. Specifically, women earn about 82 cents on average for every $1 men earn.
Although Falls Church has hovered at or near the top of the Healthiest Communities rankings since their inception, it’s not guaranteed to stay there, Haines says. “If the majority of counties improve year over year, the bar for landing at the top will rise,” she says. “If Falls Church continues to demonstrate success across so many of our categories, ranging from Population Health to Education and Economy, it will likely continue to perform well, since consistency is key in our rankings.”