Priorities
Our program priorities detail Michigan's opportunities and challenges that lie ahead.
Michigan Environmental Report
Michigan Environmental News
Over the past few decades, there's been a marked shift in the American healthcare paradigm. So says Chip Amoe, sustainability officer for University of Michigan Health.
In the past, clinicians tended to focus on diagnosing and treating a specific condition or disease with medication and technology, he said. That's still the case, but now clinicians are placing those ailments in the context of patients' greater lives—where they live, how they eat, where they work, how they sleep, the money they make, the education they have.
Take lead poisoning as an example. A pediatrician may prescribe a treatment process for a sickened child, but these clinicians may also work to understand that child's life. From there, they may discover that a child lives in an old home or drinks from old water pipes. They may then connect that child's parents to programs that can remove lead at its source.
Now, healthcare systems are also undergoing a similar shift. Its staff are looking at how their own work environments—their buildings, their food, their equipment and their transportation—are affecting the health of the communities they serve. And institutions in Michigan are doing something about it.
Michigan's population growth is second-worst in the nation, continuing a decades-long, largely downward trend. It's why Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has made population retention and growth a leading message.
Her proposed state budget, however, doesn't fully put her vision into action.
The largest housing investment in state history was a top priority of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's State of the State address Wednesday evening in Lansing.
Gov. Whitmer called for $1.4 billion of state and federal money to be used to build or rehabilitate 10,000 homes of all sizes and varieties. Its effects would give long-lasting benefits to peoples' environment, health, and finances.