034: Janisse Rosario-Schoepp, Ph.D. (Health Foundation of South Florida)

Janisse Rosario-Schoepp on Innovation City

“You need to have the right people at the table, because you have to have a shared value and a shared vision. Without that, you’re not going to get the job done.” — Janisse Rosario-Schoepp

Welcome to Innovation City—powered by Venture Cafe—where Tyler Kelley and Michael Johnson, Co-Founders of SLAM! Agency, interview innovators, creators, and disruptors to discover how business is changing in the modern world.

Created and produced by SLAM! Agency in conjunction with Venture Cafe St. Louis and Venture Cafe Miami, Innovation City gives you an inside look at how rapidly business and culture are changing thanks to increasing diversity and inclusion, heightened creativity, and a stronger and better-connected business community.

Today’s guest is Janisse Rosario-Schoepp, M.P.H., Ph.D., the Vice President of Operations and Strategy at Health Foundation of South Florida. She also recently attended the Young American Leaders Program at Harvard Business School. Janisse plays a critical role in the Health Foundation’s work to improve the health and economic well-being of communities in South Florida. She joins us today to talk about the social determinants of individual and community health, the changing role of foundations in redeveloping communities, how important it is to think about health when thinking about development, the differences between redevelopment and gentrification, and how to build up opportunities in order to eradicate health disparities in minority communities.

They discuss:

• Janisse’s switch from Engineering to Public Health in her third year of college
• Moving from Puerto Rico to Miami for graduate school
• Attending Florida International University, the largest Hispanic Public Research University in the U.S.
• Falling in love with Public Health
• Public Health’s focus on population health, improving overall health of populations
• Creating a built environment that supports a higher quality of life for its residents; grocery stores, spaces to exercise
• Health disparities in minority communities; lack of open space, parks, after-school programming, access to grocery stores and healthy foods, through streets and sidewalks
• Creating a culture of health
• Give people the space and opportunity to practice the healthy behaviors that health representatives have been trying to teach communities for years
• Social determinants of health
• 40% of what drives poor health resolves down to: whether people have access to jobs, primary care, and transportation
• 30% comes down to healthy behaviors
• Genetics makes up 10-15% of health determinants
• What drives Janisse
• The power of investing in the communities around us
• Providing equitable access to opportunity, healthcare, and education
• Redevelopment vs. gentrification
• Performing health impact assessments for any redevelopment project
• Being in the early stages of public health and redevelopment interactions
• Miami’s position at the forefront of American development
• Serving as a model for the rest of the nation
• Liberty City Square: an affordable housing development with wrap-around services; health center, job training, early education, and other support services
• Millennials moving back to the city from the suburbs
• Being one of the poorest cities in the nation
• Addressing the needs of communities that have historically lived in redeveloping areas
• Making health one of the major facets of urban planning
• The struggle of changing cultures internally at the Health Foundation; moving away from the traditional role of a foundation as grant-makers or grant-providers, to a role as co-partner to the organizations that they give grants to
• Shaping the markets; aligning with other funders. Using the Foundation’s public capital to unlock other private capital
• In the past, private businesses had a natural investment in their local communities; globalization has changed that. Janisse and her coworkers are thinking about how to drive reinvestment in local communities
• The Anchor Institution Initiative, and other ways the Foundation, and Miami, are ahead of the national curve
• Engaging the private sector to re-invest in the communities around them
• Miami’s long history of committed private businesses headquartered in Miami
• Disruption within philanthropy and hospitals; creating pool-funded models to address the social determinants of health
• Impact investing; earning a financial rate of return, but with a social impact