Nearly 300 business leaders gathered Wednesday in Dallas to discuss the links between health and economic mobility in Dallas-Fort Worth.
Steve Nurenberg/Special Contributor
Children living in Dallas’ Highland Park neighborhood have an average life expectancy of about 85 years. Just 12 miles south in Oak Cliff, kids are expected to live 17 years fewer.
That short drive down Stemmons Freeway represents the “most expensive 12-mile stretch in America,” according to Christopher Boone, an alumnus of Oak Cliff’s Browne Middle School who is now the group vice president of research services at Oracle Health and Life Sciences.
Boone was one of several speakers at the Dallas Regional Chamber’s Opportunity Summit on Wednesday morning, where he shared the arresting health figures. He was joined at Fair Park by nearly 300 business leaders who gathered to discuss the links between health and economic mobility in Dallas-Fort Worth.
Article continues below this ad
Boone argued that such a stark disparity in health outcomes for neighborhoods situated within the same county is the result of structural differences in the metro area’s development: zoning designations, lending opportunities, hospital placement and school district boundaries.
“The people who built this great city were not villains,” Boone said. “What they gave us became, over time, the architecture of a 17-year life expectancy gap not because they engineered the gap, but because they engineered without imagining it could happen.”
Dallas is not alone. A research team at UT Southwestern Medical Center found in 2019 that life expectancy varied as much as 30 years between ZIP codes across Texas, and data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show wide discrepancies in life expectancy between census tracts in every state.
But Boone hopes Dallas can position itself as a national leader in reducing that gap.
Article continues below this ad
Keynote speaker Chris Boone, a vice president at Oracle Health and Life Science, wants Dallas to be a national leader in reducing the wide discrepancies in life expectancy between census tracts.
Steve Nurenberg/Special Contributor
DRC president and CEO Brad Cheves said doing so will have a bigger impact than improving community health outcomes. He said it’ll boost the region’s economy too.
“When communities are healthy, businesses benefit from stronger workforce, greater productivity and higher quality of life that helps attract and retain talent,” he said.
Cheves views investing in community health as especially important at a time when the area is already seeing impressive growth.
“If we want North Texas to remain one of the nation’s leading economic regions, we have to think beyond growth alone and focus on creating conditions that allow more people to participate,” he said.
Article continues below this ad
The chamber seems to be taking that sentiment to heart, recently making health and childcare visible priorities.
Healthcare leaders at the summit were aligned on the message that “it takes a village; not one entity can do it alone,” as said Niki Shah, senior vice president for health impact and innovation at Las Colinas-based McKesson. The speakers gave several recommendations for how businesses can do their part.
Michael Horne, president and CEO of Parkland Health Foundation, told executives to first educate themselves on the issues and opportunities in the space, spotlighting reports like the Dallas County 2025 Community Health Needs Assessment. Referencing those resources allows employers to make data-informed decisions about where to invest financial and human capital for the greatest workforce impact, he said.
James Scoggin Jr., CEO of Methodist Health System, underscored the importance of building trust with nonprofit partners to gain access to communities in need and leverage systems that already work well.
“We don’t want to reinvent the wheel,” echoed Cristal Retana Lule, vice president of community relations at Children’s Health. “They’re the ones that know what their community needs.”
Article continues below this ad
Alongside investing locally, Shah promoted “embedding access to care and social drivers of health into your business DNA.”
Scoggins pointed to a role for government as well, noting that Medicaid reimbursement rates in Texas are “abysmally low” and arguing that the state could step up and “accept more responsibility” to provide funding for care. A new report found that Texas has more uninsured young children than any other state.
Better data integration must be part of the solution, Boone said. He advocated for “real-world intelligence,” which combines AI tools with large datasets of patient health information. This would improve data availability and communication, he said, limiting the barriers to care faced by patients in historically underserved communities.
“The cities that figure this out first will lead the next decade of medicine,” Boone said.
Article continues below this ad
He took a step toward that goal Wednesday, announcing the Twelve-Mile project — a one-year project hosted by the DRC’s Alliance for Opportunity and Impact that is seeking 75 D-FW business leaders to collaborate on closing the 17-year life expectancy gap through “workforce practices, benefits design, neighborhood investment and hiring and advancement pathways.”
Boone summarized his vision in one sentence: “In Dallas, your ZIP code will not be your fate.”