Salus Health Care Forum: November 5, 2025

And it’s very gratifying knowing that the food won’t go wasted. We need this network before we can shift from a shareholder, profit-driven model. I’m sorry to say, I fear this shift will take generations.  Meanwhile, we can do the simple things: the natural networks, the walking programs, the stop vaping initiative. I think that’s where it’s at.

Rich

Can I leave us quickly with what I think will be a feel-good story that came out of this Belleville walking and wellness program? With the Hopi model, you’d have teams of four, and people would have a pre and a post assessment, blood pressure, walk test, blah, blah, blah. And we let people organize themselves into whatever team of four they want to be part of. This is a town of 1500 people. We had 900 participants. So, right off the bat, there was a lot of interest. And it turned out that there was a mother and daughter who wanted to be on a team of four.

And they were without the numbers three and four on their team. And so there was a kid in high school who was sweet on the daughter. They were in the same class. They’re both juniors. And there was an older widowed man. He’d been widowed a couple of years when he joins a team. So when this team starts, they’re all walking together at first, and the high school junior, he’s all excited because he’s spending time with this girl. At the end of the two years, he was walking with the widowed widower, the 70 something year old guy. This high school kid had experienced lots of trouble. He had a single mom taking care of them. She worked long hours. He was in all kinds of trouble with the law and was going to drop out of school.

But long story short, at the time of this kid’s ultimate graduation from high school, this old man gives him his car because he doesn’t really drive anymore. And much to everybody’s shock in the community, the 70-something guy has set up a scholarship for this kid to be able to go on to college in a family that never had anybody go to college. I mean, it still chokes me up. Other than offering the opportunity, I had  had nothing to do with this outcome. You were talking about natural connections or pathways. They found each other. And I think if we help that kind of giving become part of our cultural norm then we should be able to find these kinds of connections.  It really goes a long way to addressing the other downstream problems, because I’m sure with this kid, it would have been a bad outcome if he hadn’t had the chance to connect with this older man.

Jeremy

This has been an excellent discussion. I thank you all.