Over the past year, the Missouri Public Health Institute has taken a thoughtful look at who we are, how we show up for our partners, and where our work can have the greatest impact. That reflection culminated in our new 2026-2028 Strategic Plan, and with it, a refined mission that clearly articulates our role in Missouri’s public health system.

 

Our mission is simple but ambitious: We advance Missouri’s public health system by building capacity, strengthening infrastructure, and fostering statewide public health system collaboration.

 

But a mission statement is more than words on a page. It represents shared values, lived experience, and a vision for what is possible when people work together toward a common goal. In the reflections below, MOPHI President and CEO Spring Schmidt shares why this mission matters to her personally, and how it captures the heart of the work we strive to do every day.

 

“I love the mission of our organization. It is important to me that we are working on system-level issues but with a clear connection to the people who make up that system. Building capacity and fostering collaboration are all about the relationships we have and the way in which we support people who are the real infrastructure of public health. I do want people to be able to be public health professionals in a system that supports them. I think we can only really achieve that when we work together. My personal mission always starts with people, and I can see that in our organization’s mission as well.

 

I also like that our mission gives us a big umbrella for the activities we can do while also giving a few guardrails around the kinds of activities we don’t really do.  It communicates to people that we have a focus for our work while still giving us the freedom to be creative about how we achieve this mission.  I can think of hundreds of ways in which we can build capacity, strengthen infrastructure, and collaborate.  We can do it in big ways with statewide impact, and we can also do it when we are sitting with a single partner and helping them out with something.  It matters that we can see all our work finding a way to support this mission.

 

Finally, I love that this mission connects our team members, our stakeholders, our funders, and our friends in a way that everyone can see where we might be able to make an impact on issues that have concerned us for a long time.  I see hope for real change in this mission and a pathway that can help us get there together.”

Check out our full 2026-2028 Strategic Plan here.