How healthy are children in your city?
Atlanta has made the greatest strides in improving the health of its children than other large cities in the country. That is the determination of a recent report issued by the Washington, D.C.-based Population Connection.
The Health Improvement Report Card is an evaluation of data from 25 major cities (those with Metropolitan Statistical Area populations greater than 2 million) and 140 independent cities (those with populations of 100,000 to 2 million). Using data from 1990 and 1998, the organization evaluated the cities based on three key health indicators: the percentage of births to teens, the infant mortality rate, and the percentage of low birth weight babies.
In Atlanta, the percentage of births to teens decreased from 22.2 percent in 1990 to 17.1 percent in 1998. The infant mortality rate for the city decreased from 15.6 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 9.9 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1998. The percentage of babies born with low birth weights decreased from 12.5 percent to 11.4 percent. In sum, those improvements were the highest of all 25 major cities studied.
Washington, D.C., and Pittsburgh followed closely behind Atlanta. Baltimore and St. Louis were the least improved cities on the list.
The Health Improvement Report Card is part of the organization’s biennial Kid Friendly Cities Report Card series. Despite their high scores for health, Atlanta was ranked last on the list of Kid Friendly Cities, and Washington, D.C., was ranked 22.
To view the complete Health Improvement Report Card and the Kid Friendly Cities Report Card, visit www.populationconnection.org.