Last Friday our foundation hosted 29 future health leaders of this community as selected by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and trained by the Center for Creative Leadership. HCF is proud to partner with these two nationally known and respected organizations and to be selected as the local sponsor of this 16 month leadership training process. To kick off this event, I invited Mayor Joe Reardon of the Unified Government of Wyandotte County/ KCK and Mayor Elect Sly James of KCMO to speak. These two leaders were remarkable.

Before I was hired to work at HCF I was the Director of the Missouri Department of Social Services. This Department was responsible for over 11,000 children who were in foster care in the state of Missouri. Based upon my experience in Jefferson City, I find it particularly troubling that on February 10th the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Serves (SRS) has instituted a new policy to share sensitive information.

I read several newspapers daily to keep informed. Last week I noticed that Jack Miles, Editor of the Warrensburg Daily Star Journal, wrote a column that really made sense to me…reduce the size of state government by reducing the numbers of our elected state officials.

On March 23, 2010 President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) into law and a lot has happened since then. As you may recall the provisions of the bill are phased in over several years, but already the following provisions have been implemented:

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• Insurance companies are required to cover children with pre-existing conditions
• Any new health plan must provide free preventive services
• Insurance companies cannot cancel a insurance policy when someone gets sick and they cannot set lifetime limits

Last Friday I was notified that Dick Dunn, former Director of the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services had passed away. Prior to running this large state agency, Dick was the Executive Director of Boy’s Town of Missouri. Dick was from the Springfield area and while he was passionate about and devoted to his work, he loved the outdoors and he always had a hunting or fishing story he wanted to tell you about.

I just returned to Kansas City after spending four days in Los Angeles attending a Grantmakers in Health Annual Conference. Grantmakers in Health (GIH) is made up of some 450 health related funding foundations from throughout the United States. National foundations such as Robert Wood Johnson, Kaiser, and Kellogg are joined by much smaller regional and statewide funders to discuss how we can advocate for and support the health related needs in our communities. I was honored to be recently elected to the board of directors of this organization.

Last week I met with Mayor/CEO Joe Reardon of the Unified Government of Kansas City, KS and Wyandotte County and I was so impressed with his vision for improving his community – especially concerning his passion for promoting healthy living.

The Mayor received bad news a few months ago that Wyandotte County had the worst health outcomes of any county in the state of Kansas. Because of the Mayor’s leadership outlook, he considered this news as an opportunity to be bold and to take strong action to improve the health outcomes of his community.