Health Is Bigger Than Healthcare: What Kansas’ Health Gaps Reveal About Our Communities
What if one of the biggest health stories in Kansas isn’t happening inside a hospital?
A recent Kansas Health Foundation article, Leading Health Through Courageous Conversations, asks Kansans to confront the relationship between race, history and health.
One statistic makes the conversation difficult to ignore:
Kansas ranks 39th out of the 39 states with sufficient data to measure overall health-system performance for Black residents.
That comes from the Commonwealth Fund’s 2026 State Health Disparities Report, which examines access to care, quality of care and health outcomes.
But that number raises a much bigger question.
What actually creates health?
The doctor’s office is only part of the story
Medical care matters. Doctors matter. Insurance matters. Hospitals matter.
But what happens before someone ever walks into a doctor’s office can matter enormously too: where you live, what food is available nearby, whether your family has stable housing, whether you can find reliable transportation, whether your job provides enough income to meet basic needs, whether children have quality educational opportunities, whether neighborhoods are safe, and whether people have a meaningful voice in decisions affecting their lives.
Public-health professionals often group these conditions under the term social determinants of health.
And once you understand that concept, something interesting happens:
Issues that appear separate suddenly begin connecting.
16 problems—or one interconnected system?
Six years ago today, on September 16, 2020, the community standards that would become central to RRCBA’s work were established.
There were 16: Arts & Culture; Civic Engagement; Communication; Employment / Jobs / Training; Education; Food Accessibility; Financial Literacy; Health / Mental Health; Housing; Quality of Life / Neighborhood Safety; Reentry Population; Relational Collaboration; Transportation; Technology; Wichita State University Partnerships; and Youth.
At first glance, that can look like a long list of separate community issues.
But look again.
A family without reliable transportation may have difficulty reaching medical appointments. A neighborhood without nearby healthy food options may face different health challenges than one with easy access. Housing instability can create chronic stress. Education affects employment opportunities. Employment affects income. Income affects housing choices. Housing affects neighborhood conditions. Neighborhood conditions affect health. And health affects nearly everything else.
Maybe these aren’t 16 unrelated problems.
Maybe they are 16 different doors into the same community system.
That idea is increasingly consistent with how public health understands community well-being.
Kansas’ numbers make the conversation urgent
The Commonwealth Fund ranking is not the only indicator worth examining.
Kansas Department of Health and Environment data shows that in 2024, 27.3% of births to Black non-Hispanic mothers met the state’s criteria for poor birth outcomes, while White mothers had the lowest rate at 18.1%.
A separate KDHE infant mortality report reports that in 2024 the non-Hispanic Black infant mortality rate was 11.7 deaths per 1,000 live births, compared with 4.9 among non-Hispanic White births.
Those numbers do not tell us everything about why disparities exist.
They do tell us something important: the outcomes are not equal.
Understanding why requires looking beyond individual behavior and examining the environments, institutions and opportunities surrounding people over time.
Awareness isn’t the finish line
The Kansas Health Foundation’s accompanying organizational materials challenge institutions to examine leadership, history, language, organizational practices, community power, workforce conditions, data, accountability and investment.
That distinction matters.
Organizations can hold meetings about inequality. They can publish statements. They can host panels. They can acknowledge disparities. And still change very little.
The harder questions come afterward:
Did a policy change? Did resources move? Did residents gain greater influence over decisions affecting their neighborhoods? Did a barrier disappear? Did someone’s actual outcome improve?
That is the difference between discussing a problem and building infrastructure to solve it.
From courageous conversation to organized action
RRCBA’s work is built around a simple belief: the people most affected by community conditions should have meaningful opportunities to shape what happens next.
That means connecting residents with organizations, institutions, businesses and decision-makers around identifiable community priorities.
Increasingly, we think of that process this way:
VOICE → PRIORITY → COMMITTEE → CONNECTION → ACTION
A resident identifies an issue. That issue becomes a community priority. People with shared interests and expertise organize around it. Connections are made to organizations, resources and decision-makers. Then the work moves toward action.
Health provides perhaps the clearest example of why that model matters.
Improving health may require healthcare professionals. But it may also require educators, developers, business owners, food producers, transportation planners, youth advocates, behavioral-health professionals, neighborhood leaders, researchers, residents, government and philanthropy.
No single organization can solve every piece.
Which brings us back to one of the original RRCBA community standards:
No more silos.
The next question belongs to all of us
The Kansas Health Foundation is encouraging courageous conversations about health, race and the conditions shaping people’s lives.
Those conversations are important. But Wichita has an opportunity to take the next step.
Not simply: What is wrong?
But: What can we change?
And perhaps most importantly: What part of the solution are each of us positioned to help build?
Six years after the adoption of RRCBA’s Community Standards, the connections between those 16 themes are becoming even clearer.
Health is connected to housing. Housing is connected to economics. Economics is connected to education. Education is connected to opportunity. Opportunity is connected to community power. And community power begins when people participate.
Add your voice.
Read the Kansas Health Foundation’s article, then explore RRCBA’s committees and identify where your experience, expertise or interest fits.
Because courageous conversations can start change.
Organized communities can build it.
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