Public Health in the Rockies 2026

The rising cost of living, housing, and healthcare costs were the top three challenges facing the state, identified by residents in the 2025 Colorado PULSE poll. Weld County’s triennial Community Health Survey (CHS) captures several metrics relating residents’ affordability concerns to factors influencing their health. This presentation will share findings on food insecurity, rising housing cost burden, and cost as a barrier to healthcare from a random sample, mail-based survey sent to 20,000 Weld County households in 2025. Weighted results offer a representative picture of how these issues affect county residents.

The 2025 Weld CHS revealed that roughly 4 in 10 residents are worried or stressed about affording medical care, health insurance, and healthy meals. Additionally, cost remains the most frequently cited barrier to accessing healthcare, behavioral healthcare, and insurance. The percent of residents who are housing cost burdened (spending 30% or more of household income on rent or mortgage and utilities) rose significantly from the previous survey cycle in 2022 (43% versus 33%, respectively). While affordability concerns affect a broad swath of Weld’s population, young adults and those living in low-income households bear a disproportionate burden.

These findings support Weld County’s efforts to expand access to care and adequate nutrition, addressing cost barriers through free health screenings, a public health mobile unit, and free, high-quality chronic disease prevention/nutrition programming. The impact of the Weld CHS does not end with the health department; these findings are disseminated to a multitude of community partners leading to continued improvements to service delivery addressing financial barriers to health care, behavioral healthcare, housing, and food access. Continued inclusion of affordability measures as part of the CHS strengthens this collaborative effort across a broad coalition of community organizations and healthcare partners.