Flip the investment emphasis to upstream flourishing, to support and reward holistic well-being, instead of from downstream reaction to illness and social failure. Create a sustainable financing model for community-led flourishing collaborations focused on youth and their families that can serve as a model for all other populations.
The Investing in Flourishing model is transformative. It blends best practices in advancing child flourishing outcomes with experience in creating successful, scalable investment markets. It builds on previous efforts to address the intersection of clinical care, social supports/services, and place-based community development. It builds on prior efforts to innovate financially by paying for outcomes. The IIF financing model is designed to shift upstream a portion of current health and social services spending AND free it to be spent by community-led collaborations on a variety of child/family/neighborhood needs to achieve flourishing, not just prevention/wellbeing activities in each specific sector.
Create a system that places a financial value on youth flourishing. Create a national market for “Flourishing Bonds.” Reduce government, business, and societal costs (e.g., health care, corrections) while improving youth opportunity, educational results, employee productivity, and overall community health.
Our intended outcome is the transformation of what is funded in the United States in health and social services to create robust, thriving individuals and communities. The welcome byproduct of creating opportunities for all of our youth is that government, employers, and society will spend a lot less in the future on chronic illness and reacting to social failure: acute and chronic medical care, courts and jails, and rehabilitative services.
