We are very pleased to release the fifth edition of the Big Cities Health Inventory(BCHI), a compendium of health status indicators produced in a comparative format for the 54 largest metropolitan areas in the United States. This report fills an information gap that, despite great advances in information technology over the past decade, still persists today. Data on the health of our communities are probably more widely available at this time than at any point in the past. The Internet has become a vast repository of statistics on a variety health conditions. But less progress has been made in turning these raw data into usable information, especially for the nation's largest urban areas which face higher rates of poor health status and racial/ethnic disparities in illness and access to health care services.