May 7, 2025

In partnership with the Big Cities Health Coalition (BCHC), the Drexel Urban Health Collaborative (UHC) has released new data on the Big Cities Health Inventory (BCHI) data platform. 

The data platform includes more than 200,000 data points for over 125 metrics for the member cities of the BCHC. The platform now includes all available data for all metrics spanning years 2010 – 2023.  

This year, lead poisoning metrics were added along with three metrics related to the social determinants of health (youth not in school and not working, internet access, and cost of rent). 

Trend data for the new metrics show that over the past decade: 

• Childhood blood lead levels have declined in all cities nevertheless, rates remain high in cities with the highest rates of poverty and older housing. 
• The percent of 16-19 year olds who are not in school and not working -- a metric that has relevance to healthy youth development and community safety -- has been mostly stable over time (on average, 8%, ranging 3% to 15% between cities in 2023).  
• Internet access doubled with the largest gains seen in lower-wealth cities like Detroit and Memphis. Nevertheless, as of 2023 approximately 1 out of 4 lower income households living in BCHC cities still lack broadband access.  
• Cost of rent increased most sharply in cities in California, the Pacific northwest and Denver which aligns with higher rates of homelessness in those cities. 
  
   

The data platform can be used for viewing charts for single cities, as well as comparing metrics across cities, and viewing racial and ethnic inequities across cities. Data can be downloaded as a csv or single charts.

Compared to other platforms, the BCHI has newer data, three times as many metrics, city-level data, and data for racial and ethnic subgroups. The data – which mostly originates from over 25 federal and state sources --  undergoes extensive data processing (harmonization, age-standardization, etc.) and quality checks to ensure comparability across cities and time. Over the past 12 months, the platform has been used over 60,000 times including to download data and charts. 

Take A Deep Dive Into The Data

The Drexel BCHI team and the Big Cities Health Coalition held a webinar on Tuesday May 13, 2025. The webinar briefly oriented users to the new data on the platform and demonstrated features of the platform. Click the link below for a recording of this event.

Learn More

Stay up-to-date on the Big Cities Health Inventory by following the BCHC (@BigCitiesHealth) on Twitter and check our What’s New page to subscribe to our newsletter.

The Big Cities Health Inventory data platform is primarily supported by Cooperative Agreement Number NU38PW000033 awarded to Big Cities Health Coalition and funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the Department of Health and Human Services.