Cities as catalysts: Unlocking up to 25 billion healthier years of life

By 2050, the number of people living in cities is projected to grow to about 70 percent. Large disparities in health outcomes within urban populations suggest that a city-level focus has significant potential to improve health.

At the McKinsey Health Institute (MHI), our research estimates that a focus on improving health at the city level can unlock 20 billion to 25 billion additional years of higher-quality life across cities globally (approximately five years per person living in urban areas) – and that all organizations across sectors have a role to play to capture this opportunity.

Immediately influenceable interventions, grounded in a rich existing evidence base, are a starting point to improve health at a city level. Four categories of interventions can harness cities’ unique potential to tackle the growth in noncommunicable diseases: healthy longevity? interventions (including those that address cancers, cardiovascular diseases, and diabetes); brain health interventions (including initiatives that address mental, substance use, and neurological conditions); climate-related health interventions; and interventions that improve health-worker capacity.

All of these intervention groups are highly relevant across the globe, addressable, and underresourced.

As part of its commitment to help people live longer and healthier lives, MHI is taking action to advance health in cities by partnering with city-level, national, and global stakeholders. As you may have read in The Consult and Google Health, this includes collaborating with Google Health and Stanford Medicine to combine strengths in analytics, technology, research, and convening power to improve the health of cities and communities globally. Working alongside a broad network of stakeholders and regional leaders, the three organizations will actively explore opportunities to create new resources and learnings to impact health at scale, across multiple contexts. Among other key priorities, an initial focus of this collaboration is mental health and investigating how the responsible use of AI can potentially close gaps in care—in alignment with existing city-level health initiatives, population health strategies, and clinical applications.

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