San Angelo Named Second-Healthiest Community in State

Healthy selfies, group activities, clean eating and a push for healthy choices in the local school district secured San Angelo’s stance as one of the state’s healthiest mid-sized communities this year, a position that was officially rewarded with recognition in San Antonio on May 9.

Sixty-four thousand points separate San Angelo from the south Texas town of Pharr, a narrow margin as compared to the point ranges for the other 500 participating cities in this year’s IT’S TIME TEXAS Healthy Community Challenge.

“We were second in the mid-city range, but we would have won the larger city range,” Shannon Wellness Coordinator September Summers said. “We vested so many points, and that was what was cool. So when It’s Time Texas CEO and co-founder Baker Harrell got up to talk about every town, he really, really did pump up people about San Angelo.”

Coming in five places ahead of last year’s run in second, San Angelo reported some 305,150 points this year during the fourth month competition, beating out larger cities like Austin, Houston, Dallas and Waco in the metro categories.

The success follows a heavy push for participation and outreach by Summers and HEB Wellness Coordinator Stephanie Riesener, who have spearheaded local participation in the annual competition since the city’s inaugural run in 2014.

“We tried to have more events that involved the community that we reached out and made people more aware of what was going on so that they could go register,” Riesener said. “We partnered up with the schools and tried to get the schools to offer the information to the kids during their daily physical education so that they could also get their parents involved.”

The roughly 4-month competition began in January and ended on April 12, this year. According to the official rules, mayors, schools, businesses, agencies, community and faith-based organizations and individuals could earn points for their city by organizing or participating in a range of healthy activities. The more activities, the more points they earned for their individual cities.

This year, San Angelo not only placed in second for its community size, but fifth in the school district category, when SAISD scored 14,800 points, falling behind Leander, Coppell, Spring Branch and Allen ISD.

There were 48,719 individual activations, 61 business and organization activities and 690 pounds lost by community members during the challenge. On May 9, both Summers and Riesener were invited to San Antonio to represent the city as finalists in the challenge. At that conference, the women were presented an award.

“Really everybody in San Angelo needs to understand that this award is for them, we just received it,” Summers said. “This award is for San Angelo and all that we do to be healthy.”

Having jumped five places since last year’s challenge, Summers and Riesener say they’re planning on a continued amplification of their efforts to keep San Angelo in the spotlight as one of Texas’ healthiest communities.

“I would really like to partner with the city and…get the word out to more people in our community and encourage our schools to become more active…” Riesener said. “I would like San Angelo to be one of the healthiest communities in Texas.”

All activities were tracked online and can be seen at www.hebcommunitychallenge.com.