The 20th Community Focus Report is out. The 2024 report, published every two years, highlights areas that need to be addressed and things that are going well in Springfield and Greene County. It was unveiled during a Friday morning event at the efactory in downtown Springfield.
Eleven committees made up of subject matter experts reviewed local, state and federal data and considered programs and projects that are making a difference in the region, said Jonathan Groves, department chair of communication at Drury University and the report’s facilitator. Each committee was tasked with identifying three red flags or challenges and three blue ribbons or strengths.
The report’s steering committee then determined overall themes for the report. Those are Arts & Culture; Business & Economic Development; Citizen Participation; Community Health; Early Childhood, Education; Housing; Natural Environment; Public Order & Safety; Recreation; Sports & Leisure; and Transportation.
Groves pointed out that the report doesn’t list all of the region’s strengths and challenges, just key ones at this moment in time.
“So many red flags are not just isolated problems limited to a particular category,” he said. “They span across the report’s topic areas. Dealing with opioid use is not just a law enforcement issue, it’s a community health issue, it’s an early childhood issue, an education issue.”
The 2024 Community Focus Report finds that strides have been made in the areas of mental health and poverty. It points to public programs such as the Healthy Living Alliance’s “Hey, man, you good?” campaign and Burrell Behavioral Health’s Rapid Access Unit, a public/private effort to provide emergency level care to those with acute mental-health crises. But there are things that need to be addressed, including Greene County’s suicide rate. The report states that “the age-adjusted death rate for suicide rose from 15.9 per 100,000 population in 2004 to 22.1 in 2021. And the report found that Greene County continues to face a serious issue with child abuse and neglect, with an incident rate significantly higher than the state as a whole.
Poverty continues to remain a red flag, but Groves said the community has come a long way since the first Community Focus Report in 2004.
“With the work of organizations such as Community Partnership of the Ozarks, Prosper Springfield and The Fairbanks,” he said, “we have seen a gradual decline of poverty in Greene County despite some backwards steps caused by the Great Recession and the COVID pandemic.”
Groves said addressing the issue of poverty “requires an examination and understanding the diverse community and disaggregating data by race, ethnicity, gender, ability, age and income.
He pointed to data that shows that Greene County has grown about 8% over the last decade and, with that growth, has come diversity.
About 12% of the county identifies as a race other than “white only,” and 4% is Hispanic or Latino, he said. More than 14% of county residents reports having a disability, and Groves said the LGBTQ+ community is growing.
“We have to understand how each group is affected individually,” he said, “because, as the community as a whole is to improve, we all have to do better.”
The report shows that the local economy remains strong with the unemployment rate in Greene County staying below that of the state and the nation.
But a red flag under “Business and Economic Development” is a continued need to address wages. Groves said the region’s cost of living has dropped back below that of St. Louis and Kansas City, and there’s been an increase in the median household income to $59,499 in 2023. But he said that’s 10% lower than Jackson County, home to Kansas City, and 37% lower than St. Louis County.
And higher rent and housing prices, he said, mean that many households are spending at least 30% of their income on housing, making them a cost burden household.
He said many challenges remain in the area of housing, which is why it’s a key theme in the latest Community Focus Report.
“The need for safe, affordable, attainable housing has become a community priority in recent years,” he said, “especially given our unhoused population, and those three areas are all red flags in this year’s report.”
In the area of Public Order & Safety, red flags include gun-related crimes, substance-use issues and staffing shortages. Blue ribbons are community collaboration; awareness, education and response to mental health; and enhanced technology use.”
Education’s blue ribbons are collaborative culture, partnerships with community organizations and the graduation rate, which has continued to improve. Red flags are achievement gaps, social challenges and recruiting and retaining critical support staff.
You can view the complete 2024 Community Focus Report as well as past reports here.
The report is designed to bring public and private organizations together to come up with solutions to the area’s needs. It's a collaborative effort of Community Foundation of the Ozarks, Junior League of Springfield, the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce, the Springfield-Greene County Library District and United Way of the Ozarks. More than 100 volunteers also contribute.
After two decades, the management of the Community Focus initiative will transition this year to the Ozarks Public Health Institute at Missouri State University. For the past two years, Tracie Nash, Doug Neidigh and Alan Tinkler at MSU have researched and developed a new model for the report. Nash said, as she spoke to people about what they wanted in the future, they expressed a desire for more data, more community input and more progress on longstanding issues identified in the report over the years.
It will be important to include both blue ribbons and red flags, she said, so people can rally behind the strengths as they work to address the problems. She said they plan to offer data to any organization that requests it. And, as they collect more and more data, Nash said they want to demonstrate it on a community dashboard that will show short term games as well as long term impact, "so that we understand which programs, which practices, which initiatives are working, where we can pool our resources together."
They plan to increase the partnership with the Springfield-Greene County Library, according to Nash, and will host panel events focused on various topic areas at library branches to engage everyday citizens. They also might ask people to take part in short polls as they go into libraries.
