My daughters and their friends have been my greatest teachers as I learned what challenges face teens and how powerful they can be in changing the status of their own health and the situations that affect the health of others.  I have seen them be. a force for health and a force for kindness in their own circles and also a labor force for their local or distant communities. That is why they are in my cover image in the portal here.

I co-founded this organization and serve as its medical director.  In my life I often sense problems and seek ways to solve them.  It’s like being a doctor and society is the patient.  My technology solutions were successful but ahead of their time and too expensive to use or way ahead of where society was ready.  We did telemedicine, surgical simulation, and online high quality STEM education beginning in the 1980’s, but the connection speed was too slow, the computers too expensive and not mobile, and society did not trust a remote connection or never heard of one.

Taking care of patients with horrible diseases was a rewarding experience.  so was responding to disasters as a first or second line responder, and improvising on the spot and implementing solutions.  I learned valuable lessons in dealing with extreme situations.  When people  are put into new and challenging roles, some need a great deal of help, and others step up and fill the gaps with exceptional actions and service. The trained professionals run towards the problems with great heroism.  We see it with police and fire fighters but we were not surprised.  What I have over and over again was teenagers  and young adults and retired seniors filling the gap for their friends, families, and communities when any of them were overwhelmed.  With a little bit of training and support,  they  became a force for health and stabilized the situation and helped move things to a recovery phase.  They helped take survive, to staying alive, to thrive.  I founded Force for Health to help provide the knowledge, skills and resources to help motivate and harness this under recognized and under utilized resource and have it become the service learning opportunity of a lifetime and the difference between disastrous outcomes or dramatic successes.

A lesson learned was that we need to be as healthy and knowledgable as possible in ordinary times so that we can be an asset in extraordinary times.  The focus on obesity and addiction prevention, social determinants of health, and diversity issues is so important to having strong people and a strong society. I also recognize that governments and agencies often take too long to respond, or are influenced by political or budget issues that don’t support preparation, response and recovery fairly.  That means, all problems are LOCAL and must have most or all of their solutions be capable of addressing them on a local basis.  This only works if the local people can figure out. what to do and step up to help themselves or to selflessly rush in to help their neighbors.

In the past few years,  slow motion disasters are what I and others are recognizing but we are not responding in ways that are making a large enough difference.  We need to be stepping up and running toward the issues and on a grassroots level with the skills and resources  we each have, we must chip away at the issues. With a world wide pandemic in an inequitable world, we are in the midst of the first simultaneously world wide local problem during an age of instant communication and limited resources.  Now, once we stabilize ourselves and neighbors, we must extend our reach and realize our family and neighbors are everyone on Earth. With the eventual  power of the Force for Health Network,  and waves of confident empowered people, we can add to the knowledge available for free or low cost worldwide, and help spread the movement with media messaging, validated community solutions, and votes for the best policies.

I believe everyone can be a force for health for themselves and then do the same for others.  I believe everyone must be personally responsible for their own health and contribute to making it a healthier, kinder, and equitable world for their neighbors, worldwide.