State-wide healthcare listening tour

“One of the messages that we’ve been advocating on this whole tour is that health is more than just what happens in the doctors office.”

Karen McNeil-Miller, the new CEO of the Colorado Health Foundation is embarking on a state-wide listening tour to hear about health concerns among Coloradans. McNeil-Miller will visit every county in the state and since the start of the tour in September, she has heard many common concerns from residents, particularly in the area of mental health and substance abuse, “for some communities it may be more heroin and prescription opiate use, for other communities it may be more methamphetamines, for a lot of the communities it was alcohol among teenagers.”

McNeil-Miller says that access to affordable housing is an issue that is also impacting health around the state “one of the messages that we’ve been advocating on this whole tour is that health is more than just what happens in the doctors office. Health happens where we live, work, play and worship and health is affected where we live, work, play and worship.” If someone is not able to afford a home, it may put them into temporary or episodic homelessness, if they spend all their money on housing, that gives them less money to take care of the health needs of themselves and their families.”