After months of community meetings, city business leaders today presented a draft action plan for improving life in the Troost Avenue corridor.

The next step – implementing changes – will start in January in what advocates say is a unique public-private effort to change life between Troost and 71 Highway, 22nd Street to 52nd Street.

The action plan for the Urban Neighborhood Initiative (UNI) was presented today to about 250 community leaders, neighborhood advocates and business representatives at the Federal Reserve Bank in Kansas City.

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Brian Smedley, director of the Health Policy Institute at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, D.C., praised the UNI effort in a recent speech and talked about the problems of racial and ethnic disparities.

Just in health care alone, he said, black and Hispanic people who live in poor areas get lifetimes of lower quality care than whites, resulting in millions of dollars in public health costs and millions more in lost worker productivity.


Read more at Midtown KC Post.