Better Health, Not Just Better Health Care: A Prescription for Progress from the Big Cities Health Coalition

This report grew out of a meeting of the Big Cities Health Coalition, a group of 18 city and county health departments from major American urban centers that focused on improving the health of people in their cities. Formed in 2002, the Coalition’s goal was to provide opportunities for leaders of urban health departments to share with one another their efforts to meet the challenges of creating healthy environments and helping people grow up healthy and stay that way. The goals of the meeting, upon which this report is based, were to propose federal policies that could help urban health departments meet the health needs of the diverse populations they serve and to highlight innovative and successful strategies used by some public health departments.