Thank you, Community Foundation of Johnson County, for honoring me with the initial Community Catalyst designation. I am very flattered and humbled – especially since many in the audience are as qualified for the award as I am. But, Oscar Wilde once said, “The best feeling is doing a good deed anonymously, and then having someone notice that you did it”.
I am going to devote my response to my latest passion, the Healthy Kids School-Based C.inics... In reality, this award should be shared with the dozens of people and organizations who were initially involved in the beginning of the Healthy Kids clinics and continue to be involved. And by the many who helped finance its birth – Mercy Iowa City, U of Health Care and United Way. But it really started with the Barriers to Learning conference in 2003 that the school board organized when I was a member. 150 or so Johnson County residents... attended. That day we identified that lack of health care access for many of the students in our local schools was the significant barrier and deserved addressing.
Is this lack of access a surprise to any of you? Let me assure you that it is true; that we here in comfortable Johnson County live among these children and their families who do not have, or cannot afford, health insurance... Many of our citizens are not aware of them, or have managed to ignore them.
The clinics are well into our second decade. They have expanded gradually to have a presence in four schools... I have visited many clinics around the country and found that our clinic system is one of the very few in the country which relies on the largess of the community...
Some may think, why should anybody part with hard-earned money or scarce time for someone else’s child? To that thought, I refer to William Penn, founder of Philadelphia and for whom the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is named, who 450 years ago said:
“I expect to pass through life but once. If, therefore, there can be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do for any fellow being, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again”.
