Expanding its partnership with America’s largest cities to help implement policies that can improve residents’ access to healthy choices, CityHealth, an initiative of the de Beaumont Foundation and Kaiser Permanente, released today its first annual ranking of the largest 75 cities with its revised 12-policy package.  

CityHealth annually awards the nation’s largest cities with gold, silver, bronze, or no medal in different policy areas that can improve people’s access to healthy choices and address critical health disparities in local communities. 

This year, Boston and Denver rise to the top by earning overall gold medals. These two cities qualified for overall gold by earning at least five gold medals in individual policy areas; Boston earned six golds and Denver earned five golds. In 2022, 37 cities were awarded with overall medals, including Boston and Denver, which earned overall gold medals. Nearly 39 million people live in a city that has earned an overall medal.  

America’s 75 largest cities earned 370 individual policy medals across all 12 policies, including 126 gold medals, 102 silver medals and 142 bronze medals. Complete results can be found at cityhealth.org.  

CityHealth partners with the Center for Public Health Law Research at Temple University’s Beasley School of Law and other evaluation partners to surveil the laws and policies and rate the cities on their combined quality and quantity of policies in place in the 12 policy areas. For complete results, including individual medals by policy area, go to: cityhealth.org/2022-assessment/. 

Between 2017 and 2021, CityHealth assessed America’s 40 largest cities on a nine-policy package with a strong record of success: nearly 93% of cities earned overall medals, and 10 exemplary cities earned an overall gold.