Distraction is easy. Disparity costs lives.

Spectacle or Survival?

We love a distraction. A Coldplay concert gaffe becomes the talk of the week. A Cracker Barrel logo change blows up our feeds. We fight over the oddest things while the real problems sit quietly in the corner.

Take a short walk in Nashville and the contrast will stop you cold. On the East Bank, cranes stretch into the sky for a new $2.1 billion stadium. Just a few blocks away, families in low-income housing still fight for timely medical care. Mothers miss postpartum visits. Babies never make it to their first birthday. Kids wheeze through asthma seasons that feel endless.

The city is building for spectacle. Families next door are asking for survival.

And the truth is, this isn’t new. It’s a hundred years old.

Highways that cut through Black neighborhoods. Mortgage maps that told banks which families “deserved” credit and which didn’t. Primary care that was always treated as optional, not essential. Digital tools that promised connection but left families chasing passwords instead of people. Over time, all of it added up to distance. Distance between families and care. Distance between survival and spectacle.

The Numbers Tell a Story We Already Know

We don’t need more data to know what’s happening, but the numbers make it harder to ignore.

• Infant mortality. In 2021, Black infants in Nashville died at a rate of 15.7 per 1,000 live births. White infants at 3.4. Over five years, Black babies died several times more often than White babies. Those aren’t stats. They are birthdays that never came.
• Maternal health. Black mothers in Tennessee die at nearly twice the rate of White mothers from pregnancy-related causes. The review panel calls most of those deaths preventable. When a zip code and an insurance card matter more than clinical risk, it’s not personal failure. It’s a system set up for unequal results.
• Life expectancy. In Tennessee, it’s 72.4 years, among the lowest in the nation. Within Nashville, maps make the divide visible. In some neighborhoods, people live years longer than in others. The pattern has been there for generations.
• Asthma and avoidable emergencies. Kids end up in ERs because primary care is too far, too fragmented, or too hard to reach. It’s not destiny. It’s a choice.
• Food access. Families ride buses for produce. Corner stores sell dinner. Nutrition advice becomes a lecture when there’s no grocery store nearby.

Every one of these realities has been documented for decades. We have the reports. We hold the meetings. The question is whether we’ll keep describing the problem or finally decide to fix it.

The Contrast We Pretend Not to See

Nashville has already proven what it can do when it decides to build. Look at the stadium. Look at the music halls. Look at the convention centers. Look at how quickly we can align government, developers, donors, and banks when the project is shiny enough.

If we can marshal billions for a building that roars on Sundays, surely we can find a fraction of that will for a clinic that works every day. Even one percent of the stadium’s budget could seed neighborhood clinics that families can walk to. Staffed. Measured. Sustainable.

This is not about pitting joy against justice. It’s about insisting that a city worthy of the stage must also be worthy of its children.

So What’s the Fix?

It’s not complicated. It’s just not shiny.

Place. Put the clinic in the neighborhood. Where the families live. Within walking distance of schools, Head Start programs, and housing. Exam rooms for babies and mothers. Therapy rooms that fit real schedules. A navigation hub that works just as hard between visits as during them. Proximity isn’t a detail. It’s the intervention.

People. Staff to the reality of patients, not the convenience of the schedule. That means daily newborn and postpartum blocks. That means social workers on site, same day, with warm handoffs from pediatricians. That means therapy—speech, OT, PT—in the same building where a child learns, so the parent doesn’t have to leave work. That means community health workers who text, call, and when needed, knock on a door.

Tools. Forget portals that families can’t use. Two-way texting. Daily lists of who missed visits and follow-up within hours, not weeks. Asthma management in homes and classrooms with home monitoring and quick coaching. School nurses with real protocols, not just inhalers in a drawer. Simple data links so referrals don’t vanish between the school and the clinic.

Proof. Post the outcomes where everyone can see them. Not a 50-page report. A simple board: kept visit rates, postpartum visits at two and six weeks, asthma ER visits down, on-time well checks, milestones met, kindergarten readiness. Put it on the wall. Put it online. When the numbers slip, admit it and fix it.

None of this is glamorous. That’s why it works.

What the Change Looks Like

Imagine the first few months.

Mothers and babies seen in days, not weeks. No buses, no waiting lists. Blood pressure checked easily. Lactation help standard, not optional. Families get texts before and after visits with plain instructions.

Children with asthma have control checks scheduled, spacers in hand, and home trigger lists they made with a coach. When pollen spikes, a text goes out in the morning. Teachers can walk a child to therapy in the same building where they learn. A teenager who asks for help after school sees a counselor before dinner.

By the end of year one, the curve starts to bend. Emergency visits down. More mothers making their two-week and six-week visits. More children hitting milestones on time. The dashboard is public. Families hold the team accountable. Donors and health plans see exactly where the money went.

It’s everyday work. Nothing flashy. That’s why it changes lives.

Why One Percent Is Enough to Start

The upfront cost is real—space, staff, tech, outreach. But compared to what we are already spending on spectacle, it’s small. One percent of the stadium project would launch multiple sites, cover a two-year runway, and fund future viable clinic sites where one has never existed.

And it would buy something harder to price: the habit of measuring success by what families can feel.

In five years, the clinic runs on value-based contracts that reward results. Shared savings flow back into what created them. The dashboard keeps going public. Infant mortality narrows toward the county average. Asthma ER visits fall. Mothers live to celebrate first birthdays. More kids walk into kindergarten ready.

That is the return. Not EBITDA. Not a ribbon cutting. A child who can breathe easier at night.

Why Now

Because the cranes are already in the sky. Because families in public housing just blocks from the stadium have waited long enough. Because we know the numbers. Because we know most of these deaths are preventable. Because proximity and trust fix the space between a diagnosis and a better life.

And because spectacle without survival is failure.

The Invitation

This is not charity. It is not a luxury. It is not another white paper. It is a chance to do what Nashville does best when it wants to—align will, resources, and leadership to build something that lasts.

If we can do it for a stadium, we can do it for our children.

So let’s keep the concerts. Enjoy the logos. Debate the mascots. But let’s save our fiercest energy for the question that really matters:

What will we build for the child who lives one bus stop from the stadium?

Nashville is writing its next chapter. Let’s make sure mothers and children are on the first page. Who's interested in helping?