For the Sake of All has been receiving positive attention in local and national media. Here’s a round-up of the many places people from around the country are learning about the work of For the Sake of All in St. Louis.
On Sept. 11, Director Dr. Jason Purnell wrote an opinion piece on For the Sake of All for the Huffington Post as part of its “Listen to America” tour being held around the country. Dr. Purnell wrote eloquently about how the program’s name refers to an unfinished score by Scott Joplin and the work to eliminate health inequity that still needs to be done in St. Louis, our beloved city by the river.
“If anything has become apparent to residents of St. Louis following what is known by the shorthand “Ferguson,” it is that all of us are implicated in and impacted by the inequities that have characterized our region for decades. And all of us are also necessary in addressing the multiple factors that result in an unequal distribution of health, life, and the resources that support them both,” wrote Dr. Purnell.
Dr. Purnell was also quoted in an Aug. 20 Washington Examiner Piece on the Affordable Care Act and stalled Congressional efforts to bring the social determinants of health and health equity more prominently into national public health policy.
In August, For the Sake of All and multiple community partners celebrated the opening of a school-based health center on the campus of Normandy High School, a part of For the Sake of All’s “next steps” to foster healthy schools.
Print and digital stories about Normandy’s new health center ran on Aug. 23 in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and July 27 in The St. Louis American. Fox 2 News also aired an extensive story on a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the center held Aug. 31 at Normandy High School. St. Louis Public Radio aired an Aug. 10 piece on student health centers in the region highlighting Normandy’s new health center, now named Affinia Healthcare at Normandy High School.
For the Sake of All was also the recent recipient of a prestigious $1.1 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to work with the Normandy Schools Collaborative and St. Louis Public Schools to develop a “toolkit” to better coordinate and implement programs that foster healthy schools.
The Post-Dispatch and the St. Louis American each published stories on the project on Aug. 9 and Sept. 6. Washington University also wrote about the project in its campus-wide digital publication, the Source.
On Sept. 10 the Post-Dispatch published an editorial praising our momentum on fostering healthy schools, noting “public education is too often a political battlefield where children’s basic needs are forgotten. For the Sake of All puts the emphasis back where it belongs.”
Washington University graduate Joe Madison, AKA The Black Eagle, interviewed Dr. Purnell on his national Sirius XM radio talk show Aug. 31 to discuss healthy schools that attend to the needs of the whole child.
“We can begin to close the gap in educational outcomes by actually attending to the issues that stand in the way of the ability to learn,” he said. “A child who can’t see, can’t hear, can’t breathe, hasn’t slept, has been traumatized doesn’t know where they are going back home to at night doesn’t have the opportunity to learn, and none of us would.
Staff has also been out in the community discussing For the Sake of All’s research and work. On Aug. 25, Dr. Purnell presented research on health inequity to a new class of Focus St. Louis Impact Fellows, a group of community leaders currently learning about the region’s health care safety net. On Aug. 31, Communications Manager Nancy Cambria presented to the St. Louis Regional Chamber on the critical importance of investing in quality early childhood programs to promote optimal brain growth and build a future labor market.
Finally, For the Sake of All is pleased to announce it has developed a concise Fact Sheet that includes information on its history, research, goals, and current work. Please share this fact sheet with anyone interested in the mission of health equity for St. Louis.
Supporters can always follow For the Sake of All on Twitter to see up-to-date posts on research, current news, and other notable items regarding health equity and progress in St. Louis. Supporters can also sign up for email notifications about new blog posts on the bottom of our website home page.