Connecting Public Health to Public Transit

John Fox, Jean Meyer, Dr. Anthony J. Tedeschi, and Wright L. Lassiter III, are the heads of Beaumont Health, Ascension Michigan, Detroit Medical Center, and Henry Ford Health System, respectively. They collaborated on an opinion piece published by the Detroit Free Press that makes a strong case for considering public health when advocating for improved public transit.

"Strong public transit is fundamental to building and maintaining healthy communities in Southeast Michigan," begins the opinion piece. "The evidence is clear. Lack of access to a working regional transit system can have life and death consequences for residents of our community. It is a public health issue and an issue that we have the ability to solve."

The opinion piece directly supports the effort to craft a regional transit plan—a prospect that has proven controversial over the years in the Detroit region. The most recent failure came in 2016, but the nascent possibility of new regional transit plan has already gained support from a coalition of corporate leadership in addition to this more recent expression of support from the region's healthcare leadership.