How UK is taking on one of the greatest challenges to Kentucky’s future

It’s one of the greatest challenges to a vibrant future for Kentucky: our health.

Health certainly means the treatment of illness. Perhaps even more urgent is the need to prevent illness from occurring in the first place.

Good health, in fact, is determined by medical and non-medical factors. Access to the best care closest to home matters. But other supports and opportunities — close to home — matter as well in determining quality of life and well-being — excellent schools, good-paying jobs, access to wellness centers and healthy foods, among others.

A strong and stable economy undergirds all of these critically important attributes. And there are abundant reasons for optimism. Our state’s population is increasing. Our economy is growing.

But the positive pace of change must accelerate. If our state is to meet its potential, then we must do more at this moment to improve multiple measures that speak to the overall sense of health in Kentucky.

At the University of Kentucky, we’ve been asking ourselves what role we must play. Led by our board of trustees, we’ve established important goals.

First, we want to engage more with collaborators in every corner and community of the state. We know that the best solutions are most often found working with and in communities.

Second, in reaching out more to support and serve, we want as a partner to be the university working harder than any institution in the country to advance the health of our state.

How the University of Kentucky is advancing our state’s health

It’s audacious. It’s also essential. Our Board of Trustees recently directed us to focus on four pillars of progress that will determine our success as a partner to:

1. Graduate more students aligned with the state’s priorities. We rank near the bottom in the country for the number of primary care physicians per 100,000 people. We face other critical care shortages, too — nursing, public health officials and other health professionals. We are adding capacity — through new beds, buildings and treatment spaces — to care for more patients with advanced health needs. But we are also adding classroom space — in addition to medical campuses we have now in Western, Northern and Eastern Kentucky — to educate and train more people to answer our state’s call.

1. Launch a new statewide network with partners that will foster community solutions to community challenges. The Advancing Kentucky Together Network will engage in partnerships across the state to address holistic health, workforce training and educational needs. Over the last two decades, we’ve worked with strong community providers to ensure that patients can stay close to home to receive the care they need. We share protocols for specialized care and provide other services. Importantly, we also learn in the process. There is great expertise in hospitals and clinics across the state. And we’ve improved what we do over the years by learning from others. The same process can work in other areas, such as workforce training and education.

1. Expand the deep connections found in our Extension Service to do even more in, with and for communities. UK’s extension offices are found in all 120 Kentucky counties. They help Kentuckians with a range of issues, from all aspects of agriculture to fine arts, finance and mental health services. Can they bring together schools, public health departments and other leaders to assess and address the biggest community challenges?

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1. Construct more space for research aimed at Kentucky’s biggest health challenges. Solutions to so many of the challenges we confront are found at the intersection of disciplines. World-class researchers working in teams across disciplines is how we find new discoveries that can take breakthroughs in advanced care from the bench to the bedside, or from the research lab into communities where they can have impact. At UK, though, virtually every space for such work is full. We are aggressively planning to build the capacity necessary to strengthen our commitment to solving Kentucky’s health challenges.

We don’t undertake these efforts in a vacuum. Many of our neighbors — Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina — are not standing still. They are experiencing incredible growth and they’ve developed specific economic niches and put the necessary resources behind them.

Making Kentucky healthier, wealthier and wiser

We have economic opportunities with the potential for tremendous growth, too — auto manufacturing and batteries, health care, distillation, logistics and advanced manufacturing powered by advances in materials science.

Those efforts will only succeed if we have a large and highly skilled workforce, trained and healthy, living in vibrant communities. All of this is possible. It can happen with devoted partners, working in the community, for the community.

At the University of Kentucky, our sole mission is focused on how we advance Kentucky in everything that we do.

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We know that ensuring a state that is healthier, wealthier and wiser tomorrow than it is today means that we must become the institution that, more than any other, works with partners to do more for the health of the state we serve.

It is time to accelerate our progress. It is time to honor that promise for the state we serve today and what we know it can be tomorrow.

Eli Capilouto is the president of the University of Kentucky.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: The University of Kentucky is advancing the state’s health | Opinion