Khodr Farhat

Healthy Dearborn is a vibrant community coalition that has partnered with the City of Dearborn since 2015 to create a culture of health in Dearborn by working to reduce health disparities through active living and healthy eating strategies. For more on Healthy Dearborn, please visit our website: https://www.healthydearborn.org/. How do you see your Mayoral administration or Dearborn’s City Council working with Healthy Dearborn? And what specific ideas do you have for implementing Healthy Dearborn initiatives? *

As a candidate for city Council myself, if elected, I promise to support healthy Dearborn and its initiatives. This is extremely important because all activities of healthy Dearborn promote healthy lifestyle. As such, I expect city Council and the administration also support this great efforts in every way, shape and form and to ensure that all of the resources will be provided.

What do you see as Dearborn’s biggest health challenges and Dearborn’s biggest health assets? How can we best leverage our assets to address our challenges? *

I believe that we have so many assets and opportunities. We have many green areas, parks etc. We are able to utilize all of this in order to encourage more and more spring and summer activities. Also, we have a great deal of workout facilities for the winter season. Our biggest challenge I believe is to encourage all residents to walk, bike etc. We have to work collectively in order to design our city around the ideas of biking, walking and performing other activities.

Do you believe that "Health in all Policies," which is the use of health assessment tools to guide decisions on major civic projects and policy decisions, should be implemented in Dearborn? Please explain why, either way. *

Yes I firmly believe that any decision or policy that aims to influence the public health condition in our city should be driven and stemmed from a health related source. Certainly, I am not talking about any source, rather, it should be a very credible and trustworthy one. I would like to make sure that every decision or policy is purposeful and aims to make the health and well-being of our residence better.

Dearborn’s Multimodal Transportation Plan (MMTP) (https://walkbike.info/dearborn/) was developed with significant community involvement, including Healthy Dearborn, and was adopted by the Dearborn City Council on October 6, 2020. How do you see the implementation of the MMTP fitting into your community health priorities as City Council Member? *

This is a great achievement. I am pretty sure that a lot of residents will benefit from it. Therefore, I am all in for this.