Our Community's Wealth Built on the Health of All Residents...
Especially the Youngest Among Us

The building blocks of a thriving community and
well-functioning society rest on the health and development of our residents. The poor metrics that our community is harnessed with reflect factors that we realize are all interrelated and symptomatic of investments that historically have addressed the immediate rather than root cause(s). There is an old saying that..."you don't have anything if you don't have your health".  Good health is critical to the quality of life, individual and community productivity and overall economic well-being. Our future wealth is inseparable from the health of all residents. When a large portion of our residents are left behind, more of our community's future is left behind.

It is not new news to anyone that we have a chronic disease tsunami tumbling across the face of our nation's health care system. The high rates of preventable disease (e.g. heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, chronic lower respiratory disease, etc) represent one of the largest drivers of health care cost. We all pay for this and are at risk of an unsustainable trend of rising health care costs. In the process we are spending more and have poorer health outcomes than our competitors in other developed countries.

In these challenging times, it is more important than ever to invest in the health of our residents. If we could only do one thing to reduce crime, improve education levels, improve family income, reduce premature onset of disease, improve quality of life, it would be to strengthen a major building block of healthy development, the serve-and-return interaction with a newborn through facial expressions, babbling and gestures and supportive responses. It really comes down to warm loving relationships, particularly at the most crucial time for brain development (i.e. prenatal to three years of age). This back-and-forth relationship is the fundamental process for growth and richness of the brain's architecture. We all have a vested interest in our community's children. They represent the future wealth of our community. Strategically prioritizing these upstream investments could lead to Winnebago County becoming one of the healthiest in Illinois in the span of just one generation.