Generally, residents living around the southwestern edge of the city, alongside the state’s border with Alabama, and east to Fort Benning experience elevated rates of negative health outcomes and unhealthy behaviors.

The lowest performing neighborhood overall is around Porterdale Cemetary. However, this neighborhood does not have the worst scores on many of Columbus’ most pressing health concerns – diabetes, respiratory disease and arthritis.

Generally, the Avondale, Willett and Wynnton areas see a greater burden of negative health outcomes, along with Benning Hills and Willis Plaza. Metabolic illnesses such as diabetes and kidney disease and arthritis have particularly high modeled rates in these areas, as do respiratory diseases.

Columbus has a very sharp northeast-southeast divide in its racial composition, and this pattern carries through to many, though not all, of the health indicators modeled in the 500 Cities dataset. These areas of burden also tend to have greater shares of residents in poverty and lacking a high school diploma, and affect more African-Americans.

Columbus tends to have very large clusters of medical care providers around its hospitals, with some scattered along major thoroughfares. While this leaves neighborhoods like Wynnton seeing the presence of some care providers nearby, large swaths of the city have no health care providers.

The Wynnton neighborhood has an estimated 24.8 percent of residents diagnosed with diabetes, putting it in the 99^th percentile for nationwide prevalence.

On the other hand, the neighborhood on the other side of Wynnton Road has 8 percent of residents predicted to have been diagnosed with diabetes, putting it in the 28^th percentile for prevalence nationwide.

Columbus diabetes prevalence is unique among those studied by Georgia Healthy Cities in that it does not align as precisely with its co-morbidities.

Kidney disease and stroke both have more diffuse spatial patterns than diabetes. However, the neighborhoods hit hardest by diabetes prevalence – Wynnton and some of its adjacent neighborhoods, in addition to Benning Hills and Willis Plaza – also experience the highest modeled rates of kidney disease and stroke. Critically, these neighborhoods have very few grocery stores.

Diabetes prevalence in census tracts across Columbus strongly mirrors its rates of African-American residents and its rates of residents in poverty, though neither spatial distribution perfectly aligns.

While educational attainment is a strong correlate with diabetes, the City’s rate of residents with less than a high school diploma has a much more diffuse spatial pattern than modeled diabetes prevalence.

Smoking is a critical concern in Columbus, with well over half the city’s census tracts in the 50^th percentile or higher for the behavior.

Asthma tends to hit residents in Avondale and west toward the Chattahoochee River much harder than elsewhere in the city, with residents in Hilton Heights and near Lake Oliver seeing the lowest risk.

COPD shows a similar spatial pattern as asthma but afflicts the Willis Plaza and Benning Hills areas most significantly.

Smoking, which is a critical trigger for both illnesses, is also modeled at higher rates in the neighborhoods experiencing elevated rates of asthma and COPD. Many of the neighborhoods suffering elevated levels of respiratory illness – though not the highest levels – also do not have the same degree of care access that residents in lower modeled areas experience.

Typically, African-Americans smoke at lower rates than other racial/ethnic groups in the U.S. However, Columbus tracts with elevated smoking estimates also have higher rates of African-American residents.

The spatial distribution of smoking, however, most sharply mirrors the rate of residents in poverty. Asthma shows a similar distribution.

The Wynnton neighborhood has a modeled 38.4% of residents suffering from arthritis, putting it in the 99^th percentile among census tracts nationwide.

While the spatial pattern for arthritis generally follows the same patterns as for metabolic and respiratory diseases, there is one notable difference: The residents around Lake Oliver and north experience elevated rates as well. Here, there is a modeled 32.6 percent of residents experiencing the disease, putting it in the 95^th percentile nationwide.

Arthritis can be an outcome of numerous other health concerns and also shares many of the same underlying risk factors.

The Wynnton area, where arthritis has the highest modeled rate, also has the highest modeled rate for diabetes and elevated rates of coronary heart disease.

The Willis Plaza area, which also sees elevated rates of arthritis, experiences a host of unhealthy antecedent conditions, including high rates of obesity and low rates of physical activity.

Age is a huge influence in arthritis development, and indeed, the census tract around Lake Oliver sees some of Columbus’ highest rates of senior citizens, with over a third of is residents ages 65 and older.

This pattern does not hold true, however, for the Wynnton area, where just 15 percent of residents are age 65 and older. There are also some resemblances with the spatial patterns of disability, though they aren’t perfectly aligned.