Albany, has long been a commercial hub for Southwest Georgia and continues to serve this role, particularly in the state's agriculture industry. It is the county seat of Dougherty County and currently has a population of 74,892. Major employers include Phoebe-Putney Health System, Marine Corps Logistics Base, Proctor and Gamble, MillerCoors, and Thrush Aircraft, in addition to city and state governments. The city also features a number of amenities for locals and visitors, including a zoo, an aquarium and park space along the Flint River, and the city's historic downtown district hosts a variety of locally owned cafes and other businesses.

Albany has challenges to overcome. Compared to the rest of the state, Albany has a high rate of poverty and a low median income.

	Residents with high school diploma/equivalent or greater	Median income	Poverty rate	Residents with health insurance of any kind
Albany	81.9%	$31,843	33.2%	81.2%
Georgia	86.3%	$52,977	16.9%	85.2%

Continue scrolling to learn how these demographic factors impact residents’ health and wellness. Below are our overall health risk findings and visualization tools (a data dashboard and storymap) to provide in depth analysis of the 500 Cities dataset and community assets.

Albany Health Risks

Our research shows that, relative to the rest of the country, Albany's residents are at markedly higher risk for developing diabetes, experiencing low sleep and poor mental health.

Overall Health Risks Findings

Our research reveals that some residents in Albany's central tracts can expect to live about 10 fewer years than residents to the northwestern side of town. Two neighboring tracts on the north edge of town, 113.00 and 4.00, have a nearly 10 year gap in life expectancy despite being right next door to each other.

The best performing neighborhoods are in the northwest portion of the city, roughly including the Audubon, Westgate, Westhampton and Woodbridge neighborhoods. Residents in these areas can expect to live around 79 to 82 years. Residents in the central area of the city west of the Flint River, on the other hand, can expect to live somewhere from 69 to 71 years old. Some of the best- and worst-performing tracts are right next door to each other.

While the city’s central neighborhoods generally experience the worst health outcomes in Albany, they are hardly exclusive.

Generally, the majority of Albany census tracts score in the 50^th percentile or above for adverse health outcomes and unhealthy behaviors, with diabetes, poor mental health and low sleep seeing extremely elevated prevalence compared to the rest of the country. The city’s northeastern area tends to perform better, a spatial pattern that exists in most health indicators.

While some of the neighborhoods facing the greatest health burdens also have a high rate of black residents, many tracts with lower disease risk also are predominantly black.

Education is fully entwined in health outcomes in that educational attainment influences income and economic stability, which in turn influences health outcomes.

Our research shows that tracts with the highest rates of residents lacking a high school diploma also experience elevated disease risk. The highest health risks are in the central city, where Albany also sees lower rates of high school diploma-holding residents, higher rates of housing cost burden and the city’s lowest median income ($11,490).

Many areas of high risk for health problems also have a high rate of single mothers. It could be the case that women experiencing health problems in these areas, even if they are insured, do not have the time to visit doctors and seek treatment.

Several tracts experiencing increased levels of housing cost burden also see higher disease risk and an increased likelihood that residents are not sleeping enough.

Our research found some intriguing paradoxes in Albany. The worst-ranked tract in prevention actually is the best performing tract for health outcomes.

It may be that the age distribution or other socioeconomic factor in this neighborhood is an underlying cause for these seemingly contradictory outcomes.

The majority of Medicaid providers are located in areas where residents are more likely to need them, with a major cluster around the city's only hospital. However, there is another cluster in the northeast area of the city, where there are fewer residents on public health insurance. Services for the uninsured are more dispersed and are not in an area with the highest rate of uninsured, which is around the MillerCoors Albany Brewery.

Unlike many cities in Georgia, neighborhoods where Albany’s residents are least likely to have car access do have decent, if imperfect, grocery store access.

Georgia Healthy Cities uses WIC-accepting retailers as its measure of grocery access due to the program’s nutritional quality requirements, but the program also authorizes pharmacies. This means that some neighborhoods, despite the availability of WIC-accepting retailers, may still have less access to fresh fruits and vegetables, as is the case in the neighborhood around the Carver Sports Complex and Ragsdale area.

In another reversal from many city trends, the central city areas do have better access to sidewalks than their better-off counterparts.

Diabetes

Albany sees some of the country’s highest modeled risk rates for diabetes, with some tracts appearing in the 99^th and 100^th percentile. Just over a third of Albany's census tracts score in the 90th percentile or higher.

Nine of the city’s census tracts score in the 90^th percentile or above, with the highest rates in the city center, around Carver Sports Complex and to the east of Highland Field.

In fact, only three tracts – one around the MillerCoors brewery, another to the far northeast and one to the far southwest – fall below the 50^th percentile in the disease.

Diabetes often shows strong associations with a number of social and economic factors. Our research shows that, in Albany, areas of increased diabetes risk also have a very low median income; the area of highest modeled diabetes rates have median incomes of less than $18,000.

Many of the areas with the highest rates of poverty also experience the highest rates of risk for diabetes and its related risks.

In line with research about diabetes, the strongest spatial relationship exists with the percent of residents holding a high school diploma.

Low Sleep

The majority of the city’s Census tracts fall in the 75^th percentile or higher on low sleep. The best-performing neighborhoods are to the city’s northeast edge, around the Doublegate Country Club and in the Westgate area and around Lake Loretta.

The worst performing tracts, predictably, are in the city’s center, with the highest modeled rate seen around the Carver Sports Complex. Here, more than 50 percent of residents likely are sleeping less than 7 hours a night on a regular basis.

A lack of sleep can exacerbate many of the health concerns facing Albany. Quality sleep is a component of good health. Neighborhoods with loud noises, sirens and bright lights can disrupt residents' sleep as much as irregular work hours and the anxiety of job loss can.

In the Carver Sports Complex tract, we see elevated rates of diabetes and poor mental health along with low sleep. The area also has decreased rates of leisure-time physical activity.

Mental Health

Albany neighborhoods also experience elevated levels of poor mental health, with the hardest-hit neighborhood sitting just south of Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital, in the Hinds area. About 22 percent of residents here are believed to experience poor mental health, putting the area in the country’s 100^th percentile for prevalence.

Elevated poor mental health rates extend to the south and east of this area, crossing a wide swath of the city.

There is a strong resemblance in the spatial distribution of residents lacking a high school diploma, median income and poor mental health modeled rates across the city.

The hardest hit neighborhood has a median income of $11,490 – the lowest in the city – and correspondingly has the highest rate of residents living in poverty. While it does have elevated rates of residents lacking less than a high school diploma, it is not the highest rate in the city.

Our research shows the relationship that exists between poor mental health and exercise, which is known to improve overall mental health. Notably, the census tract estimated to have the highest rate of mental health is also believed to have the highest rate of residents who are not exercising.

Binge drinking also affects mental health in the short and long term, but a comparison of these variables shows that many tracts with the highest modeled rates of binge drinking have some of the lowest modeled rates of poor mental health.

Physical activity is known to improve mental health, and indeed, the tracts with the lowest modeled rates of physical activity – cutting roughly from areas around Martin Luther King Jr. Park, north to the hospital, west to the Garden Sports Complex and east to Turner City – also see elevated rates of poor mental health.

Albany Data Dashboard

The dashboard visualizes how the census tracts compare to one another and the country as a whole.

To use, first select "Health Outcomes," "Prevention" or "Unhealthy Behaviors" from the top-right drop-down box, then select the indicator of interest from the second drop-down menu.

Use the percentile rank indicators to see how Albany's Census tracts compare to 500 Cities tracts across the country.

Albany Storymap

The Storymap tool offers an in depth look at how the high risk diseases play out across Albany, allows users to see how they compare to different risk factors and allows users to compare and contrast the social determinants of health with the health risks.

This research is based upon work supported by the Urban Institute through funds provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. We thank them for their support but acknowledge that the findings and conclusions presented in this report are those of the author(s) alone, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Urban Institute or the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.