On Friday, May 30, 2025, Alvin Glymph, Interim Chief Community Impact Officer, joined MAX to discuss how the United Way of Greater Atlanta and partners are using the Child Well-Being Index to help collectively direct resources that can most powerfully improve child well-being and transform lives for the better. Glymph began his talk with asking us to “consider a world where if a chld grew up in poverty, they had a 96% chance of moving into the middle class.” As he subsequently pointed out, the opposite is true. United Way of Greater Atlanta created the Child Well-Being Index in 2017 with the launch of the Child Well-Being Agenda. The purpose was to work with partners to determine the most important indicators of how children in each community were set up for success in reaching their potential.
Today, the Child Well-Being Index tracks 16 measures relating to the child, family, and community. The team actively works to honor and respect the humanity and strength of families and communities. The ultimate goal is for leaders, partners, and the community at-large to see uplifting the well-being of Greater Atlanta’s children as a personal calling and shared responsibility. Following are some key findings of United Way of Greater Atlanta’s latest Child Well-Being Index.
- More than 500,000 of Greater Atlanta’s 1.2 million children and youth live in areas of high need, where measures of child well-being are significantly lower than their neighbors.
- Among the 13 counties served by United Way of Greater Atlanta, there are 79 communities where children are most at risk – in neighborhoods among the most in need and also in a state of declining child well-being.
- Nearly 14,000 youth, aged 16 to 19, are not on track to college or career success.
The United Way of Greater Atlanta is actively workign with partners to use data to drive change. Glymph discussed some concrete examples in his talk.
Click here for the recording.
Click here for Glymph’s presentation slide deck.
Click here to access the Child Well-Being Index.
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