ARCHI in the News

These differences did not happen by accident. They are the accumulated result of decisions made over generations about where Atlanta invested, where it built infrastructure, who could own property and build wealth, and whose neighborhoods were treated as worthy of investment.

At a recent ARCHI breakfast, cross-sector leaders gathered to examine redlining and health equity in Atlanta. Local historian Victoria Lemos of Archive Atlanta traced how discriminatory policies shaped our city and showed that inequitable investment predates the redlining maps of the 1930s.

Redlining reinforced these patterns. Federal maps labeled predominantly Black and other communities as undesirable or “hazardous,” restricting access to mortgages and investment. The consequences extended far beyond homeownership. When investment is withheld from a community over generations, the effects show up in housing, schools, transportation, environmental conditions, economic opportunity, access to healthy food and healthcare—and eventually in our bodies and life expectancy.

Yet we too often talk about health as though it begins and ends with individual behavior. We tell people to eat healthier, exercise, manage stress, keep appointments and take their medications. Those expectations are not wrong, but they are incomplete.

Individual choices happen inside systems. A healthier choice is harder to make when healthy food is difficult to find, transportation is unreliable, rent consumes most of a paycheck, housing conditions affect a child's health, or a neighborhood has been disconnected from investment for generations.

That is why ARCHI talks about the need to invert the burden. People living with the consequences of fragmented systems should not also have to become expert navigators of those systems. If someone needs food, housing support, transportation, behavioral health care and medical care, we should not ask that person to stitch together five disconnected systems alone. We should ask what those systems need to do differently.

There are reasons for optimism. ARCHI's Community Resource Hubs bring healthcare providers and community organizations together to coordinate referrals and connect residents with resources such as housing, food and employment support. Among patients in a partnering health clinic, 86% lowered their blood pressure; at a partnering hospital, emergency-room visits and inpatient admissions decreased by 39%.

But programs alone cannot correct generations of disinvestment.

That is why this moment in Atlanta matters. The city has adopted its FY2027 budget and the Opportunity for All: Neighborhood Reinvestment Act, creating a framework for directing investment toward historically underserved communities and measuring success by whether residents' lives actually improve.

The opportunity is to make health an explicit measure of that success.

As Atlanta invests in housing, transportation, infrastructure, economic development and neighborhood revitalization, we should ask: Who benefits? Who remains disconnected from opportunity? Are longtime residents able to stay and thrive?

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And are these investments measurably improving health and well-being?

These are health questions because the conditions in which people live determine their opportunity to be healthy.

We cannot change the decisions that created Atlanta's inequities. But we can decide what we do with their consequences. We can listen to communities closest to the problems, align institutions around shared goals, connect fragmented resources and measure whether our investments are actually improving people's lives.

If geography became destiny because of intentional decisions, geography can become opportunity because of intentional decisions, too.

The question is whether we will be as intentional about creating health and opportunity as previous generations were about withholding them.