ROANOKE (WSLS 10) - Lynchburg has one of the highest well-being scores in the country, while Roanoke ranks near the bottom in a recently published survey.
The Gallup-Healthways State of American Well-Being series examined well-being across the nation, ranking 189 communities based on their Well-Being Index score.
The score is based upon five different factors: purpose, social, financial, community and physical. The survey describes the five categories as follows:
- Purpose: Liking what you do each day and being motivated to achieve your goals
- Social: Having supportive relationships and love in your life
- Financial: Managing your economic life to reduce stress and increase security
- Community: Liking where you live, feeling safe and having pride in your community
- Physical: Having good health and enough energy to get things done daily
Lynchburg, which had a well-being score of 64.9, and ranked in the top 25 for all five factors.
Meanwhile, Roanoke's well-being score of 60.5 ranked it 168 on the list of 189 communities. In order for a community to make the list, Gallup said at least 300 interviews from individuals living in that community had to be reported.
Roanoke ranked 183 and 179 in purpose and social, respectively.
Other Virginia areas ranked include Charlottesville (5), Arlington and Alexandria (44), Bristol (88), Richmond (106) and Virginia Beach (107).
The data used for the survery is based on a subset of 354,473 telephone interviews with U.S. adults across all 50 states and the District of Columbia, conducted from January 2, 2015 to December 30, 2016, according to Gallup.