AMERICA'S CHILDREN: FOUR PILLARS OF SUPPORT
Place-based support for the wellbeing of children
Summary: This updated repost of an October 2024 article introduces a series on children’s health; in the series we focus on how place-based wellness can support national efforts to improve the health of America’s children.
America’s children need help. By the time they reach age 17, too many (77%) require a waiver for health issues if they want to join the military. This is more than a national security issue; this is the future of our country. And of human generations to come.
The 2024 Presidential campaign made children’s health part of our political conversation by asking two key questions: Why are American children so much sicker now than only a few decades ago? And where is the research to understand the root causes?
With the confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr as Secretary of Health and Human Services, the conversation will now turn to national action, at the heart of which will likely be the things Secretary Kennedy spoke about most frequently during his own campaign: banning chemical toxins from foods, removing industry influence, and requiring better research.
With broad strokes in this introductory post, we set the scene and suggest four key “pillars of support for children”. In follow-up posts, we take each pillar and explore it in more detail, giving special attention to what local actors can do to achieve place-based wellness.
The pillars are health, education, community, and opportunity. In practical terms this translates, respectively, into homes/clinics, schools, place-based communities, and the policies and actions that support opportunity for all children to develop healthy lives.
Health is a broad category that holds many things - from having a loving family life to safe and clean environments to the healing foods and primary care that help avert chronic illness. Education includes the school environment but goes beyond formal training to include the extra support children need to understand themselves and the world around them. Community support recognizes that while parents and homes have primary responsibility for children, they do so best within the context of village life. The opportunity pillar stands for the richness and support that all children need from their total environment to achieve the best expression of themselves in play, learning, and work.
For each pillar, we look at the current state of affairs and then at what might be accomplished when solutions evolve at the community level.
In early Living Well Locally posts, we set out our reasoning and vision for working on health and economics in local arenas, whether rural communities or urban neighborhoods. We see face-to-face social interactions as the fuel for success in most human endeavors - whether wellness, education, business, parenting, faith and more. In this Pillars of Support series, we make the case for helping improve the wellbeing of America’s children by bringing to the local level the things that children need most to thrive.
This does not mean the levels above the community are not important, especially in today’s highly complex, technology-driven world; national and state laws and funding are needed to help create safe environments, encourage fairness, and provide protections. State and federal governments play huge roles in our everyday lives, from roads and bridges to national defense, regulatory protections and support for those unable to provide the basics for themselves . . . which includes children and the elderly.
However, the LWL vision believes local communities are the places where the most difference can be made for children, especially when families and communities act together on wellness. Through their actions, local cultures of health are created, local wellness economies mature, and everyone benefits. Cleaner environments, healthier food, and more awareness of how to maintain health all become part of normal daily life, with on-going benefits for all residents, especially children.
Wellness changes many things. Truly healthy people work better together because they recognize common ground and mutual goals. They also understand what wellness requires and why equal access and opportunity for everyone is so important.
In today’s world, extensive protections are needed to keep children safe from predators, toxins, poverty, online harms, inequality, and more. As place-based wellness creates healthier local environments, these protections become less, and children can thrive more naturally. The benefits of mature wellness economies are hard to predict - or even imagine at this point, but LWL suggests that many things will change, including the need for as much regulation and protection as is required today.
This series of posts is intended to help homes, schools, and communities improve the lives of children by identifying areas of concern and suggesting actions that can be taken. Unsafe food and toxic environments top the list, but they are not alone in their damage. We need more than allopathic medicine in primary care, parents need to understand why their children have asthma or allergies or cancer or Crohn’s Disease. And they need to understand how to heal them.
As HHS Secretary, Mr. Kennedy’s goal of achieving a measurable improvement in chronic disease within two years will not be easy. Homes, schools, and communities are where we nurture ourselves into good health - or not. This means parents, schools, and community leaders are essential partners in national efforts to Make America Healthy Again.
Please stay tuned for more on “Pillars of Support for America’s Children”.