Let’s Fix It: What If We Focused More on Prevention?

In this series of posts, Influencers explain what they wish they could fix — and how. Read all the stories here and write your own (please include the hashtag #FixIt in the body of your post).

When I made the shift from Wall Street to mission-minded work, it was fueled by the desire to help people live better lives. Now, I spend every day working to connect low-income families to opportunity, starting with a safe and affordable place to call home.

That's why it's so hard to pinpoint just one thing I'd fix.

At a time when more than 600,000 people sleep on the streets or in homeless shelters, and a record number of low-income families are barely scraping by, ending housing insecurity is, of course, at the top of my list.

But so are many other critical issues: ending hunger and making nutritious food more affordable; improving schools for all kids; creating more jobs; and building a greener world to fight climate change. Among all of these challenges, I’ve noticed a common theme about our society’s standard approach.

So the one thing I'd fix is this: Our nation’s habit of treating problems after they've formed, rather than preventing them in the first place.

Not long ago, I heard a story from Dr. Megan Sandel, a nationally recognized pediatrician (also a member of Enterprise's board). She talked about a child she was treating years ago for asthma. "I admitted the young girl to the ICU with a severe asthma attack," said Sandel. "She had previously well-controlled asthma but now had a severe attack. I wondered, 'What had changed?'"

At first, Sandel was puzzled. Why is this child not responding to medication? Why is she not getting better?

Sandel stepped back to consider other possible variables. After exploring the more typical factors, she thought to ask about the child’s home environment. As it turned out, the young girl and her family were living in woefully substandard housing, teeming with mice – one of which they discovered in the girl's bed. In response to the mice, her parents bought a cat, but their daughter was allergic to it – this is what set off her asthma attack.

“What became clear to me was that no amount of medicine would help her breathe better,” Sandel said. “The prescription I wanted to write was for a healthy home.”

Sandel has since referred to housing as a “vaccine.” Think about that. Housing as a vaccine. A vaccine is nothing if not preventative. A healthy home, in other words, is a form of preventative health care.

This story doesn’t just remind us to be a far-sighted – it challenges us to widen our scope. Sandel is a doctor, steeped in the world of medicine and accustomed to finding medical solutions to health problems. And yet, she thought to inquire about a child’s home when trying to treat her asthma.

We need to address our society’s challenges with this type of thinking. At Enterprise, we try to take this approach to housing. We see housing not only as the essential first rung on the ladder of opportunity, but also as a preventative tool in itself. Just as quality affordable housing can act as preventative health care, it can also prevent the pernicious cycle of homelessness for many families. Energy-efficient, sustainable homes can thwart unsustainably high utility costs. Housing developed near public transit can preclude job inaccessibility. The list goes on.

As a country, we get stuck playing too much defense, when we should be playing a lot more offense.

From health care provision to poverty alleviation, we resort to short-sighted, remedial solutions to our problems, rather than more far-sighted, preemptive ones. As a result, our approaches are less efficient, less effective and staggeringly more expensive than they should be.

How do we get ourselves to think as much about prevention as we do about treatment? Let’s begin by attacking the roots of our problems before they grow. Let’s not wait until they become problems to fix them.

Let’s play a little more offense. It will be more effective, more efficient and less costly – and our children will thank us for it.

Photo: Pressmaster/Shutterstock