Writer: Jerrica DuBois
2 min read January 2024 — San Antonio residents have known there is something special about their city, and now they have proof. Alamo City was recently named a gold medal city by evidence-based policy solutions initiative CityHealth for its policies promoting community health, the only city in Texas to do so. Joining the short list of only seven U.S. cities to receive a gold ranking, San Antonio sits in the company of Boston, Denver, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Portland, and St. Louis. The two other Texas cities to make the full list, Dallas and Houston, received bronze medals. Last year, San Antonio received a bronze ranking.
“We’ve worked closely with Mayor Ron Nirenberg and Metro Health Director Dr. Claude Jacob to support their desire to adopt strong health-promoting policies needed to get the city to an overall gold medal,” Tom Martin, communication director with CityHealth, said in a statement. “This is despite challenges from the state, which has opposed cities from passing policies in certain areas, such as Earned Sick Leave, with legislation and lawsuits.”
CityHealth reviews the 75 largest cities in the country and designates them with gold, silver, bronze or no medals for passing policies that improve the health and well-being of residents. To qualify for overall gold medal recognition, a city had to earn at least five gold medals across 12 individual policy areas identified by CityHealth. This year, San Antonio’s won gold medals in the following five categories: Affordable Housing Trusts, Greenspace, Healthy Food Purchasing, High Quality, Accessible Pre-K, and Smoke Free Indoor Air.
While the overall rankings are a good look for Alamo City, there are areas of improvement. The city received a bronze medal in Eco-Friendly Purchasing, and there were six categories in which CityHealth did not award the city a medal at all. Those categories were Complete Streets, Earned Sick Leave, Flavored Tobacco Restrictions, Healthy Rental Housing, Legal Support for Renters, and Safer Alcohol Sales.
In some cases, it is a matter of keeping up. For example, the city earned a gold medal in 2021 in the Complete Streets category. However, CityHealth has strengthened policy requirements for its categories since then, and this year San Antonio missed the mark.
“We do have a short list of the policies that are in our line of sight so we can continue to make steady progress year over year and maintain our gold designation,” Claude Jacob, director of the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District, said in a statement. “It is a yearlong endeavor. Some of these policies, we realize will take a little longer, but for now, we’ll focus on the policies that have shown to be most effective here in San Antonio.”
Nationally, CityHealth awarded overall medals to 46 out of the 75 cities, or 61%, up from 37 cities, or 49%, last year. That equates to 43 million people living in a city that has earned an overall medal, which is an increase of more than 4 million people compared to 2022. This indicates that local leaders in cities across the country are prioritizing health and are actively looking for solutions to the challenges they face that impact health and well-being.
“We are thrilled to see more than half of the largest cities across the country increasingly adopting health-oriented policies aimed at addressing pressing challenges that are faced by communities,” said Katrina Forrest, co-executive director for CityHealth. “Our local leaders are operating at the intersection of complex and convergent issues; everything from homelessness and housing affordability to food insecurity. This growth is encouraging as it clearly shows that local leaders are seeing the critical role they play in promoting health equity through policy.”
