Public Health Community Gets It

I am at the Lake of the Ozarks for a two day meeting of grantees of the Missouri Foundation for Health. CMT received a grant from MFH to get more senior citizens on public transit. We call it the "Ten Toe Express Program." The idea of the program is that people who use public transit get more exercise since public transit riders end up walking more to get to the train and bus and to get to their final destination. (Find out more about the program at our website.)

But what is encouraging about the conference is that public health community is getting to understand this. One presentation was by Trevor Acorn of Whittaker Homes about New Town St. Charles. Public Health professionals are advocates of sustainable design. Now we can all argue about the merits of a greenfield new urbanists community when there is so much to be done in the core. But Acorn readily acknowledged the need for public transit to connects new urbanist communities.

Meanwhile, its great we have new allies in our quests to build a more sustainable and healthier communities. Kudos to the public health community. Now maybe next year, the annual MFH conference can be somewhere other than the Ozarks which is auto dependent.