Growing Healthy People is a network of people who are dedicated to making fundamental changes to how we care for health.

We are health care providers (direct and indirect service) and related professionals, (teachers, epidemiologists, economists lawyers etc), recipients of health care services, (patients), as well as purchasers (employers and individuals) and insurance and governement representatives.

We are looking beyond trying to do “more of the same”. Demand for care is rising. Costs are rising faster even than demand. Resources are and will continue to shrink. Inequality in availability and quality of care is already well beyond acceptable. Squeezing one part of the system to expand another, just won’t work.

And yet there is hope. Over the course of history, there have been brief periods of transformative change. Some of those periods have been framed as revolutions, reformations, or paradigm shifts. What was required was new ways of thinking: A new paradigm.

I believe we are in such a period in history. Everywhere we look, systems are in crisis. As a world, we’ve outgrown business as usual.

This web site is a location for knowledgeable and experienced people to engage in civil and constructive dialogue. The idea is to raise issues, add points of view, agree and disagree with the goal of clarification and moving the ideas forward.

In these collaborations, we look for highly leveraged, strategic opportunities that model and reflect the emergent paradigm of improving  the health status of populations and reducing costs.

By consulting amongst ourselves as well as existing local, state and national leadership, we bring together the resources necessary to implement model policies and programs. We are thus in the business of developing ideas and,  in consultation with existing leadership, transforming health care.

We hope to be able to limit intellectual jousting for ego purposes and pursue the goal of developing ideas, projects, programs and systems to grow healthy people through out the course of life.

Within the site you will find questions posed or issues raised to which we invite you to add your point of view by commenting in a “reply”.

We will occasionally invite guests to present their key issues. If you have something to present and want comments from this community, please do ask.

Ultimately we hope that this community will define and bring into being a new paradigm for Growing Healthy People in Los Angeles, in California and perhaps even the US.

Do subscribe, invite your friends and colleagues to the site and don’t hesitate to send words of encouragement.

You can comment on the above statement or the “About” page by clicking “reply”.  Folks may reply to your reply as well.

Shortly, there will be a number of issues raised that invite your participation.

Welcome aboard!