Mayor Rice announces new wellness initiative

Friday, January 14

Mayor's Wellness Initiative will augment current community health efforts, provide equity focus

Today at the City of Spartanburg's annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Unity Week Walk as One event at Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church, newly sworn-in Mayor Jerome Rice announced the creation of a Mayor's Wellness Initiative.

Informed by data from the Spartanburg Racial Equity Index released in 2018 showing large racial disparities in health outcomes within our community, the Mayor's Wellness Initiative will seek to change those outcomes by focusing on health and wellness issues specifically through a racial equity lens.

Among the most jarring health statistics reveled in the Racial Equity Index is that Infant mortality among Black expectant mothers in Spartanburg is double that of white expectant mothers, a gap so wide that a Black woman with an advanced degree in our community is more likely to lose her baby during its first year than a white woman with less than an eighth-grade education.

At the other end of the spectrum, the life expectancy of residents In some city neighborhoods exceeding others by 17 years, though those neighborhoods are separated by only a few miles.

Building on past community initiatives such as Spartanburg's Way to Wellville and enhancing ongoing work such as Live Healthy Spartanburg and Hello Family, the Mayor's Wellness Initiative will begin its efforts with the formation of a task force created by the City along with a broad array of community partners offering guidance and support, including:

Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System, ReGenesis Healthcare, VCOM, SCDHEC, Access Health, Mary Black Foundation, Spartanburg Regional Foundation, Spartanburg County Foundation, United Way of the Piedmont, ReGenesis CDC, Northside Development Group, Highland Leadership Group, Spartanburg School Districts 6 and 7, Spartanburg Housing, Spartanburg County, Spartanburg Community Indicators Project, One Spartanburg Inc. PAL, YMCA, Fatherhood Initiative, The Clergy Initiative, and Boys and Girls Club of the Upstate.

This new task force will be charged with supporting equitable health and wellness efforts throughout our city as well as identifying new opportunities for programs, collaboration, and sustainable, solution-oriented policy changes. By bringing the institutions and community members already working on these issues together around around a shared equity framework, the Mayor's Wellness Initiative task force will help drive positive change in health outcomes in Spartanburg.

Speaking during his announcement, Mayor Rice said of the initiative, "Spartanburg should not be a place where your zip code determines how many days you get to spend with your grandchildren. We must do better, and we will."

The City anticipates completing formation of the Mayor's Wellness Initiative Task Force in the coming weeks.

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