Addressing the problem of crime would be the No. 1 way to make life better for people living in the St. Louis area, followed closely by tackling the cost of living, with improving schools a distant third, according to a poll of St. Louis area residents taken in July. These results dovetail with those from a related survey in which locals identified gun violence as the greatest threat to public health in the St. Louis area, and they contrast with the results of the same survey in other states, where economic concerns such as cost of living, housing and jobs dominated the top three problems that residents wanted to see addressed.
“If you want to look at it from a good-news perspective, you could say that there are benefits to living in a place that isn’t too expensive,” said Matthew W. Kreuter, MPH, PhD, the Kahn Family Professor of Public Health at Washington University School of Public Health, who led all of the surveys. “But it also shows that we have a lot of work to do in terms of the ongoing challenge of crime and gun violence in our area.”
The data come from an annual survey conducted by iHeard, a program of the Health Communication Research Laboratory at WashU Public Health. The lab is directed by Kreuter. iHeard is a listening project that aims to find out what people know, believe and care about in regard to health. It was established during the COVID-19 pandemic to track vaccine misinformation and has since expanded to encompass all manner of health information.
This is the second year that the iHeard team has polled St. Louis area residents about so-called social determinants of health. The survey was conducted July 19-21 and included 186 adults who live or work in St. Louis city or St. Louis County. Respondents were asked to identify which social problem, if addressed, would have the greatest benefit for the area, by choosing from a list of nine challenges: crime, cost of living, schools, racism and discrimination, housing, lack of a sense of community and loneliness, jobs, childcare and transportation. In addition, respondents had the option to write in their own answers.
“I know this doesn’t sound like a list of health concerns,” Kreuter said. “When most people think about health, they think about things like cancer and gun violence and mental health. But when you take a broader view, you see that social issues have a huge impact on public health. We felt it was important to find out what people living in a place thought would be most beneficial for them. You can’t communicate to the public or to decision-makers about health without first listening to the community.”
Crime (identified by 24% of respondents) and cost of living (22%) retained their positions as the No. 1 and No. 2 issues for St. Louis area residents, but the gap between them narrowed considerably. In 2024, 34% of people polled had chosen crime as their top concern, and 13% had chosen cost of living. The sharp rise in concerns about the cost of living over the past year indicates that St. Louis, despite its relative affordability, has not escaped the nationwide cost-of-living crisis. The other seven options remained mostly unchanged from 2024.
iHeard also conducted the same survey in Omaha, Atlanta, Mississippi and North Carolina for the first time this year. In all four sites, economic concerns dominated the results. Cost of living was the top issue everywhere, with housing, jobs or both rounding out the top three challenges in all four places.