Cleveland Health Survey Shows Residents Struggle to Meet Basic Needs

The Cleveland Department of Public Health released its first Health Survey in a decade this week. Credit: Mark Oprea

With the first citywide survey in about a decade, the Cleveland Department of Public Health now has a clearer picture of the city’s general health. Results began to be released this week with the publication of the 2025 Cleveland Health Survey data snapshot.

From November to January, with help from nine students at Case Western, thousands of postcards were mailed out to Clevelanders in all 34 neighborhoods of the city. A sample size of 1,497 people responded to 90 questions, from how often they smoke menthol cigarettes to how often feel depressed.

And, well, we’re not looking too great.

For starters, we have higher obesity rates (39%), diabetes rates (16%) and high blood pressure (46%). We’re depressed more often (37%) and feel less social (58%).

We’re also seeking food assistance more often (30%), receiving SNAP (33%), own fewer homes, need help paying rent and utilities, and have a tougher time securing rides to work (18%), or just keeping constant work altogether (17%).

Yet Dave Margolius, the head of the Department of Public Health who helped direct the survey, feels the tough truths the survey shows us outweighs the distressing feeling that the city isn’t improving. Or, as the philosopher Krishnamurti once said: It’s best to just see what is.

“You just can’t improve what you’re not measuring,” Margolius told Scene.

“I’m really grateful that we now have the most up-to-date health statistics of any city,” he added, “and probably any place in the country.”

And having a good read on Cleveland, or at least 1,500 of us, may be more timely than ever. The recent string of federal cuts to tree canopy restoration work, food for the Greater Cleveland Food Bank and those receiving Medicaid could impact one-third of the city. All that and other issues mean a greater reliance on City Hall to brainstorm, and legislate, ways to keep Cleveland healthy despite lost aid from the feds.

“I know that our goal is that this data, it doesn’t just sit on the shelf,” Ward 12 Councilwoman Rebecca Maurer, who’s also co-chair of Council’s Health, Human Services & The Arts Committee, told Scene.

“It has to inform the actions that we take as a city and the programming that we put into place,” she added. “I don’t think it should come as a surprise to Clevelanders, but we have to figure out how to turn this into actions and programs in the real world.”

A committee meeting to unpack the survey data is to come soon, Maurer said.

But Maurer was clear that City Council does have the choice to put data into reality. She pointed to Slavic Village, where $150,000 went into a full-on renovation of the Stella Walsh Rec Center. Sure, Slavic Village is a poster child of the effects of redlining—but, in Maurer’s mind, it’s gained access to a new place to exercise.

“I mean, we now have the most top-of-the-line weight room and gym equipment in the entire city recreation network,” she said.

The Department of Public Health will be releasing a more detailed breakdown of the data sometime later this month, Margolius said. For example, data showing how smoking rates were reduced by some 15 percentage points since 2015. (Or were, Margolius mused, just replaced by vaping culture.)

But small victories aren’t passed over easily. Which is part of the reason Margolius hopes that 2025’s data paves the way into the city realizing the incentive of not waiting as long to do the next one.

“Our hope is that we would do this every three years,” Margolius said, “instead of every ten.”