A Conversation With ... Patty Cantrell

Tell me about the Healthy Living Alliance. What are the organization’s goals?
Our goal is to make active living and healthy eating easier for everyone. Ultimately, our economy rests on how strong people are. Quality of life is a big factor in the economy and getting bigger. Today, more people are deciding where they live or invest as a business based on quality of life. Being able to walk to a store, living in a neighborhood with recreational options and healthy food is driving a lot of our country right now. One of our objectives here is to strengthen Springfield’s economy and its future by addressing our health environment. In so doing, we are going to help people be healthier and that then improves everybody’s lives through lower health care costs, improved job performance and improved school outcomes. All that builds up into a stronger community.

The HLA involves many people and organizations focused on improving conditions for health and wellness in Springfield, developed three years ago by the Ozarks Regional YMCA, the Springfield-Greene County Health Department and Jordan Valley Community Health Center. The HLA is based on the fact that achieving our goals with improving health really relates back to environmental issues. You can give people all the shots and advice on healthy eating you want, but if they can’t find healthy food, everybody’s stuck.

How can the HLA enable the Springfield community to make these goals a reality?
Education is important, but changing the health facts of this community and connecting people to resources is also important. We are working with groups around the community to develop the Food Day Celebration. It’s an effort to connect people with all the good things going on in this community. We have a lot going on in terms of helping people learn to cook fresh foods, can fresh foods and garden. It’s also an opportunity to build our local farm economy and get fresh foods to where people are. Working with employers to offer fresh snacks, rather than what you find in a vending machine. There are so many options out there for us to change – as a business, as a school, as a community – if we just know the options available. Community leaders are coming together through the HLA to work together. It’s long-term change, buts it very fundamental and important.

The city of Springfield has gone through a whole strategic planning process and there is a public health chapter that lays out a lot of the goals we share. We are adopting that, and we really want to make that come to pass for the city.

What is the top project for HLA right now?
We are developing a community health dashboard that is really going to be a game changer. Eighty percent of all downstream health care costs relate back to environmental factors. Only 20 percent of it can really be dealt with inside the doctor’s office; its everything that happens before people get there that really affects you. The dashboard is a place where we will be able to look at all the indicators of how we are doing on community health and track them over time. The dashboard will be live this coming fall and cover seven counties, basically the metropolitan statistical area, plus Branson. Every single indicator will be available by county and down to the census tracked level, so you can drill down. This is really valuable for people who are trying to figure out where efforts might have the biggest impact. You will be able to measure return on investment through this data. It will be a living document.

What’s the No. 1 thing Springfield can do to improve the health of its population?
Believe it’s possible. A lot of times it can seem so overwhelming. You try to walk to the store and you have to cross all these busy streets so you just give up. Communities around the country that decide to do this, that are doing this, are seeing the benefits. It’s a matter of having the confidence and putting it behind all the resources we have to make it happen.