Happy 2022 everyone! While this new year is starting out in a troubling manner given the spread of the Omicron variant, I remain optimistic that this year will ultimately prove to be an important turning point in our public health.
To that end, I spend a lot time thinking about community and health; what they mean, how to strengthen them and the intersection of the two. Without question, the shape of our central Maryland community is continuously shifting, but it can be found in the sum of the relationships formed within families, neighborhoods, workplaces, schools, places of worship and of course, Ys across the region.
As any public health expert will tell you (and as we’ve seen over the past two years), these relationships with other humans, no matter where and how we get it, are essential to the community’s health. Like an ecosystem, community and health feed off one another. The whole is either nourished by the good spiritual, mental and physical health of each individual part, or depleted by the lack thereof, eventually weakening and dragging down the entire set of lives it was created to support.
I’d argue that, despite the incredible disruption it has caused, COVID hasn’t necessarily taught us much that is new. I think it has brought into sharp relief something old as humanity itself; that the actions of one affect the health and well-being of all. There's no escaping that fact. It’s always been true and will always be so. It’s just more obvious now. For example, getting vaccinated may, in fact, be a personal decision, but that decision has ramifications across the entire community when we’re in the midst of dealing with a highly infectious virus that has killed over 800,000 people in the U.S. and almost 12,000 here in Maryland.
Supporting the health and well-being of the community is what the Y's work and mission have always been about. Regardless of where we work or live, or with whom, all of us are in some way impacting the health of our community, its individual parts and its entirety. Let’s all choose wisely, for the betterment of our entire community.
All the best,
John
John K. Hoey
President & CEO
The Y in Central Maryland