Health and wellness mapping
Do you ācheck inā at the gym, tweet your post-zumba heart rate, or post the mileage of your latest run? Or, do you virtually ālikeā reality TV shows, tag you and friends watching a Dexter marathon, or comment on the latest E! special? If so, you may have contributed data to the fitness maps below.
A recent study published in PLOS One (Chunara et al 2013) looked at more than 57 million Facebook users in the United States and more than 8 million in New York City alone to study usersā interests in two separate categories: (1) outdoor fitness, health and wellness, and (2) television. āInterestā is based on status updates, likes and profile categories. This information was cross-referenced and geotagged with CDC data on Body Mass Index (BMI) and EpiQuery Community Health Survey data in NYC.
The results? Those with higher percentages of āactive interestsā (exercise and wellness) have lower obesity rates, and those with higher TV interests have higher obesity rates.
The maps below show results from this study.
In a separate aggregation of activity and wellness data, a recent map from ESRI shows a nationwide perspective of likelihood of attending the gym twice per week.









