We can’t “fix it” alone

Last summer, I had a conversation with my husband, his brother, and his brother’s wife, about societal changes (among other things). My brother-in-law expressed sadness and frustration about the changes he is witnessing in his hometown community. Prior to our conversation, a newspaper article had been published with statistics from the National Center of Health Statistics that showed that of the seven American towns or neighborhoods with a life expectancy below 60 years, three were in eastern Oklahoma. – one of those three was my husband’s hometown, and the community where most of his family still resides. To put this in perspective, the national life expectancy is 78.69 years. In Dallas (where I live), the life expectancy mirrors the national numbers at 78.29, while in Edmond, Oklahoma, the life expectancy is as long as 84 years. The reasons for the decline in health are varied and complex, including poverty, poor lifestyles, and low education rates.

I understood why my brother-in-law was upset. My husband’s family is deeply rooted in their eastern Oklahoma community. Generations of the family have lived in that community. There’s even a smaller community 25 miles away that bears the family surname. My brother-in-law was embarrassed by the health rankings, as well as the reasons listed above, but he was also worried about other things that often plague small communities – the perpetual flight of young, educated people leaving these communities. As he was telling us about his concerns, he said that he and his son (who also lives in the community) often talk about these issues. “We just don’t know what the answer is to reverse the trend,” he said.

No offense to my brother-in-law and nephew who are both smart, college-educated men, but it is highly doubtful they will find the solution while they are constrained by the four walls of their offices!

Not long after this conversation, I picked up the August 2018 issue of Texas Monthly and read about how “A New Generation is Reviving Small-Town Texas.” The article highlighted several small towns in Texas that are thriving because young people are “ditching the big city to foster a rural renaissance across the state.” This isn’t just happening in Texas. Last summer, my sister-in-law went on a solo-driving trip to meet me in Utah. Along the way, she stopped and spent the night in small towns in Colorado and Idaho. When we met up in Utah, she told me about enjoying some of the weekly outdoor evening entertainment held in parks or town squares in these towns, all about the size of her own Oklahoma community. The small towns that my sister-in-law visited, much like the ones in Texas, all had something that made people want to visit and live there.

When I was in Oklahoma recently for the holidays, I picked up a copy of The Next American City: The Big Promise of Our Midsize Metros, which was written by Mick Cornett, a four-term mayor of Oklahoma City. Cornett began his first term as mayor in 2004 when I still lived in Oklahoma, so I was interested in what he had to say.

Cornett set the stage for the revival of downtown Oklahoma City by telling the story of former Mayor Ron Norick’s efforts to get United Airlines to build a maintenance facility in OKC in 1991. Even though Norick had put together an attractive incentive proposal, United Airlines ultimately chose Indianapolis as the site for the facility. As Cornett describes it, Norick was deflated. Yet, instead of complaining and “licking his wounds,” Norick wanted to understand what OKC could have done better to secure the maintenance facility. So, he continued conversations with United Airlines. Norick wanted to “learn” from his mistakes. What he learned was that, unbeknownst to Norick and local leaders, a handful of mid-level United executives and their spouses had visited downtown OKC for a weekend. And, they didn’t like it. Downtown OKC was dead. They couldn’t imagine having to live there. In the end, it didn’t matter how good the proposal or incentive package was, the quality of life in OKC had doomed the deal.

Now, here’s the important part of the failed attempt to land the United Airlines maintenance facility, and in my opinion defines true leadership – Norick and local leaders used the lesson to improve their city. Within three years, those leaders had charted a new plan, and “Metropolitan Area ProjectS” or MAPS was underway. If any of those United Airlines executives were to visit downtown Oklahoma City today, they would find it unrecognizable from the city they visited in 1991. In fact, I’m surprised at the continued growth and changes, and I visit there often!

While Norick may have been the catalyst to downtown Oklahoma City’s revitalization, it’s important to note that he alone didn’t “fix” the city’s problem. It took “a village” of OKC political and business leaders, among others to address the issues and make the changes. The progress didn’t end when Norick left office. The mayors that succeeded him (including Cornett) were just as committed to continued improvement. Once the culture has shifted, it’s easier to let the momentum continue.

In the public health field, we never start a project without first looking at the literature to find out what has worked and not worked in the past. Resources (financial and human) are too limited to waste them on doing something that has been proven to be ineffective. Likewise, Norick and his successors visited other cities and talked to other mayors to find out what was working in their communities. Much like the book, Positive Deviance, they focused on what was working well, instead of focusing on the problems. Isn’t that a lesson for all of us?

I think I’ll send my brother-in-law a copy of Cornett’s book.