Last night’s Town Hall meeting, Envisioning the Future of Our Health and Healthcare on the Coast, was a resounding success. About 70 local citizens, forming concentric circles, sat together in the round, with television cameras rolling, and openly expressed their needs, wants, desires and dreams regarding their health and healthcare.

It was a heartfelt evening of people coming together from all walks of local life to creatively share their abundant information with one another. Areas of convergent interest included access to health insurance and health care services, including specialty medical care; community education, prevention, and wellness services; nutrition and physical exercise; integrative medicine; local support and guidance for navigating illness and healthcare; and mental health and addiction treatment.

A significant success of the evening was the cooperative focus on what we can create here in this California coastal area we live in and love. As a group, for this one evening, we avoided the distractions of blame and fault-finding, and instead embraced the effectiveness of taking personal and community responsibility for achieving what we want.

MCHA will host another Town Hall meeting during the first quarter of 2006. A tentative date is Sunday, February 12, from 7-9 pm. We look forward to seeing you there.

In the meantime,

Thanks again to MCCET and all of you who helped make this initial event a success.

Sincerely,

Mark D. Kline, MD
Paul D. Abramson, MD
Richard Louis Miller, MA, PhD

e-mail: info/at/coasthealth.org