Hey Everyone,
Out and about in community again this week with the Mission & Impact team. As a group, we realized that there was a lot of desire to help families in the community, and that as a team we could benefit from looking at families in one of the most distressed ZIP codes in our city.
Understanding the needs led us to learn more about health and its impact on life expectancy in the Smoketown Neighborhood. As a team, we met Dr. Charlotte Stites with the Smoketown Family Wellness Center. Surprisingly there are a number of places in Louisville where people are not exposed to healthy living. Seeing this need, Dr. Stites created a new healthcare model that integrates service with practice.
While talking with Dr. Stites, we learned that she hopes to create this new model of healthcare in order to help with primary prevention of chronic diseases and increase the life expectancy of a child born in Smoketown by 10 years.
We learned that health extends beyond the physical body and that in order for families to thrive, they must have access to school resources, job trainings, healthy foods, clean places to live and play, and personal safety provided often by the city and government entities. It shocked us to hear how many children cannot play outside because there isn’t a safe place to go, how many parents are
not qualified for higher paying jobs, how little educational resources are provided to kids to help them keep up in school and maintain grades for future education, and more. Each of these lacks of resources puts these families at a literal disadvantage and affects their health dramatically.
So after talking with Dr. Stites and learning about the wellbeing and needs of the families in Smoketown, we were then able to help organize materials in the new Smoketown Family Wellness Center, which, when open, will provide the Smoketown community with access to pediatric office space, a community kitchen, afterschool programing, exercise initiatives, financial literacy classes and more.
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The model of healthcare created by Dr. Stites will provide primary prevention and partner with parents from the beginning of their child’s life to provide services that will explain the needs of education, access and support – creating a safe environment that will allow parents and children to be successful.
Seeing the distressed area in Smoketown made us all value our education, food resources, job opportunities, and see how much those things play into how healthy we are. We plan to go back and continue to help Smoketown Family Wellness Center grow and hope that you will join us in doing the same. Dr. Stites and a few members from her team will be at our Spring Connecting our Community event and we hope you will join us in welcoming her and engaging in conversation to see how your family can fit in and help the families in Smoketown.
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Thanks for joining us in our effort to be a force for good in Louisville,
CFL Mission & Impact Team
