Atlanta Moves Up In Annual CityHealth Ranking

The city of Atlanta is doing better at keeping its residents healthy and enjoying a higher quality of life, according to CityHealth’s just-released annual report card of the nation’s top 40 cities.

The latest analysis has Atlanta moving up from last year’s “bronze” status to “silver” this year.

Atlanta’s new comprehensive public smoking ban helped move the needle, as did efforts to support early education.

“This we found to be one of the most successful policies to create a thriving, robust economy in a city,” says Liz Voyles, a spokesperson for CityHealth (an initiative of the de Beaumont Foundation and Kaiser Permanente).

One area keeping Atlanta from gold status this year: a lack of affordable housing opportunities.

To hear more about how Atlanta fared, click the audio link above for a conversation between Voyles and WABE’s “All Things Considered” host Jim Burress.