Greater Birmingham is fortunate to have great health care providers in institutions that serve people from across our state and beyond. But great medical care is not the only key to health.

In fact, according to a 2009 report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Commission to Build a Healthier America , without urgent action by all sectors of society, children in the future could live sicker, shorter lives than their parents.

According to the report, "Beyond Health Care: New Directions to a Healthier America," the length and quality of our lives depends more on where individuals live, learn, work, and play than on their medical care. The latter only accounts for an estimated 10  to 15 percent of preventable early deaths.

Individuals must do more to incorporate health into all aspects of their everyday lives and leaders must support healthier decisions in everything from education and child care to community planning and business practices. Local examples include the current Health Action Partnership and Roadmap to Health, both supported by the Community Foundation.

Recommendations in the report included:
- ensuring that all children have access to high-quality education and child care
- using federal funds to provide only healthy, nutritious food in schools
- providing at least thirty minutes of physical activity a day for every child in school; and
 - creating public-private partnerships to open grocery stores in communities without access to healthy food.

"For too long we have focused on medical care as the solution to our health problems, when the evidence tells us the opposite," said RWJ Foundation president and CEO Risa Lavizzo-Mourey. "We must make it possible for more people to make healthy decisions and avoid getting sick in the first place."