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Asher Agency Supports a More Fit America
Asher Agency is collaborating with the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) and its philanthropic partner, Elevance Health Foundation, in distributing its 18th annual Fitness Index released July 22, 2025.
The annual Fitness Index tracks how well the 100 largest U.S. cities support healthy, active lifestyles and offers city and county officials a data-driven baseline to measure progress to make informed decisions for improving residents’ health. Both ACSM and Elevance Health Foundation back up the Fitness Index with direct assistance to community leaders and health providers to hopefully improve areas that need work.
This is Asher Agency’s 11th year of working on this major fitness news with ACSM, and all of us here believe in this cause and live it daily. The release was published by USA Today, and there will be hundreds of other media placements and references on social media (#100FitCities). Full rankings and scores, a call-to-action report, a city comparison tool and other insights are accessible on the Fitness Index website: americanfitnessindex.org
Our hope is that the 2025 media results will exceed last year’s results, which were outstanding. The 2024 Fitness Index earned 571 stories on all platforms (print, broadcast and online) with a reach of 326 million people. Asher helped pitch the story widely, and it was shared by NBC, ABC, Fox Business, Sirius XM, IHeart Radio, The Weather Channel, The Washington Post, Boston Globe, MSN, Men’s Health, Runner’s World, Club Industry, and other media outlets.
These are the key elements that allowed us to achieve these sensational earned media results in past years:
Solid Content Backed Up By Evidence-Based Research
Every year there are new indicators and findings that make the Fitness Index a dynamic story.
The 2025 Fitness Index results — based on 35 evidence-based indicators — showed three indicators changed in an unhealthy direction — air quality, food insecurity and reports of excellent or very good health — each getting slightly worse. Declines in air quality can be attributed to wildfires and droughts; in addition to U.S. wildfires, smoke from wildfires across several Canadian provinces traveled south and impacted millions of people in the Northeast and Great Lakes regions in 2024. Ninety-nine of 100 cities in the Fitness Index had an increase in their food insecurity percentage. Research shows this may be a result of the expiration of the expanded Child Tax Credit and the end of other COVID-era programs supporting access to food.
There are two new indicators this year – trail miles and splashpads, and an update to measuring tennis courts to include Pickleball and dual-use courts.
Other notable improvements were seen in:
- decreased rates of smoking (73 cities had a 2.6% decrease, on average)
- increase in funding for parks; 64 cities reported an average increase of $48 per capita. Among these cities, seven had a per capita increase of more than $100.
The City Rankings Offer 100 Local Story Angles
News media have shown interest in those cities going up and down in the rankings, and the rationale for those changes. Others explore how the cities rank statewide (for instance, California has three cities in the Top 10 and 16 cities in the overall rankings. And, yes, those municipalities in the bottom 10 also get attention from their media.
Outstanding Spokespeople
Strategic Outreach
Our team has a foundation of materials to communicate each year’s Fitness Index rankings and findings, including an embargoed news release, media advisory, summary report, comprehensive website, and infographic. We proactively promote the Fitness Index before, the day of its release, and afterward on multiple social media channels.
ACSM, Elevance Health and Asher Agency all engage with the media who post about the Fitness Index as well as citizens who react to issue-based or city rankings in their communities.
Fitness and Health Impacts Us All
Volpe said “Healthy living starts where we live, learn, work, and play. By getting involved in grassroots advocacy, you can help create a community that encourages and supports a healthy, active life. All of us must maintain this momentum and encourage our leaders to make bold spending choices, policy decisions and infrastructure changes to increase opportunities for residents to be physically active and healthy – one city at a time.”
Likewise, at Asher we customize winning marketing and communications one client at a time. Exercise your ability to contact us to learn more about how we can reach your organization’s greatest potential.
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