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Keynote address at the Dorothy Day Center Forum
HealthPartners president and CEO Mary Brainerd delivered this keynote address at the 15th annual Dorothy Day Center Forum in St. Paul, Minnesota on October 29, 2004.
Thank-you for this opportunity. I am happy to be a part of this gathering of business and civic leaders.
Fifty years ago, the chairman of General Motors told a senate committee that Whats good for General Motors is good for America. Today, business leaders in Minnesota are putting a twist on that concept by recognizing that Minnesota businesses benefit when their workers and their customers have good health care, education, housing, transportation and other vital services. In other words whats good for our communities is also good for business.
Itasca project
Thats why business leaders are getting involved in things like the Itasca project. This is an employer-led effort to keep the Twin Cities economy and quality of life competitive with other regions.
Itasca is made up of more than forty leaders including CEOs, the Governor, the Mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul, and the President of the University of Minnesota
Our mission is to identify and become actively engaged in priority economic and quality of life issues for the region. We believe we can bring new leadership and support to promising efforts to improve our economy and quality of life. Itasca is working to unite public, nonprofit and business resources to meet our common goals.
Weve identified six priority areas that will provide the fuel for Minnesotas economic engine.
- One is to help the University of Minnesota develop systems and linkages to engage in regional economic development.
- Create new approaches to retain and expand leading employers across the state.
- Develop a comprehensive regional transportation plan that is broadly supported, including long term priorities for the next 15 years.
- Mobilize the business community to improve access to and the quality of early childhood development.
- Another is to develop business perspective on addressing regional economic disparities among races, identifying how business can help make a difference.
- Develop strategies to support and expand small companies and emerging industries.
Reducing economic disparities
I chair the task force on reducing economic disparities among races. The number of people who identify themselves as nonwhite in Minnesota has tripled since 1980. More than one third of the residents in Minneapolis and St. Paul are non-white and Latino. And since these groups tend to be younger than the state as a whole, we should expect more growth in racial and ethnic minority populations.
This work is important to me because we see disparities in health care based on race and ethnicity. Let me give you some examples:
- African American and American Indian infants in Minnesota are more than twice as likely to die before the first year of birth compared to white babies.
- Teenage birth rates are more than twice as high for African American, American Indian and Hispanics than for whites.
- Minnesotans from racial and ethnic minorities are more likely to lack health insurance.
Health, economic, and educational disparities represent a complex set of issues and challenges. But if we do not address these problems we will waste human potential on a tragic scale, and the cost to our communities will be huge measured by any standard you choose from an inadequate tax base in our core cities to an unacceptable toll in human suffering
Prevention
An important aspect of the Itasca focus is getting up stream, preventing problems and finding opportunities. An important example is early childhood education. The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis calculates that every dollar invested in high quality programs returns as much as 16 dollars in benefits.
The return is in increased earnings and tax revenues and in lower social costs especially in criminal justice and social welfare expenses.
Early childhood education
HealthPartners is proud to be a part of two early childhood education initiatives. One is the Minnesota School Readiness Business Advisory Council and the other is Ready4K. Both of these are enlisting Minnesota businesses to find cost-effective programs that prepare kids for kindergarten.
One of the biggest barriers to quality early childhood programs is income. Although fewer than one in ten Minnesotans live below the poverty line- more than one in four children in Minnesota are growing up in families that qualify them for free or reduced lunches. So ensuring that these children are able to participate in good pre-school programs will be one challenge that we must address.
What we are learning about high quality early childhood education is similar to what we have learned in health care and that is that prevention is the best medicine.
For example, obesity used to be seen as more of a cosmetic problem than a medical issue. Today we know that the fact that two thirds of Americans are overweight presents a serious medical problem.
Many of these Americans will develop diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure, which can lead to debilitating stroke.
Just as preventing disease and helping our patients improve their health is a good business model for health care, high quality early childhood education is also a smart investment.
It results in reduced special education, fewer repeated grades, fewer teenage pregnancies and lower smoking rates.
The benefits include higher high school graduation rates, higher college attendance, higher earnings, and higher marriage rates and reduced welfare enrollment.
So clearly, investing in prevention is the smart thing to do. And it is the right thing to do.
Business involvement
For an organization like HealthPartners, I see involvement in these issues is just plain good business. We rely on the Minnesota economy and strong business environment for our growth. We are committed to this region.
A flourishing economy here means more people have access to health coverage; a reduction in economic disparities will help reduce health disparities too. High levels of educational attainment will help us recruit more young people to the health professions most of which will face shortages.
Mission, vision, values
I am fortunate to be part of an organization where a commitment to community is part of our mission. Our mission is to improve the health of our members, our patients, and the community.
But as a brochure from Wells Fargo said corporations dont have a conscience, people do. Corporate ethics is the sum total of thousands of decisions we make every day. At HealthPartners, we feel fortunate to do work that makes a difference in the lives of the people we serve and to our community.
This year we completed an extensive series of focus groups with employees to talk about the values and behaviors that reflect who we are when we are at our best. The four values that our employees came up with are passion, integrity, teamwork and respect. They define who we are and how we do our business.
The chairman of Shell Oil, Jeroen van der Veer, said, The successful companies of the future will be those that integrate business and employees' personal values. The best people want to do work that contributes to society with a company whose values they share, where their actions count and their views matter."
While we at HealthPartners are fiercely competitive about providing the best product at the lowest cost, our first focus is our mission to improve the health of our members, patients and the community. Affordable health care is part of that mission.
Our roots are in the cooperative credit union movement. In fact, we were formed when credit union leaders realized that 40 percent of their loans were to families in debt as a result of health care expenditures.
They thought there had to be a better way, and created HealthPartners. I am proud of that history, and the values that we learn from our foundation.
To paraphrase former U.S. representative Barbara Jordan, 'Nations and communities are formed by the willingness of each of us to share in the responsibility for upholding the common good.'
I am confident that by harnessing our collective talent and resources for common goals we can successfully address the critical issues facing our community.
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