Health Happens When We Come Together

Charlie Mandile’s Remarks from Together for Health 2026

At Together for Health in May 2026, HealthFinders Executive Director Charlie Mandile reflected on HealthFinders’ roots, the challenges facing community healthcare right now, and the power of people coming together to build care that lasts. Below are Charlie’s remarks from the evening, shared as prepared for the event.

Tonight, I want to start with something very simple.

Think back to the last time you were really sick. Maybe it was a chronic condition, maybe it was something that scared you…

A positive cancer screening, a mental health crisis, or a moment when someone you love was struggling with addiction.

Who did you turn to first?

For most of us, the answer is not a system. It is not a website, a waiting room, or a referral form.

It is our people. Nuestra gente.

Our family. Our neighbors. Our faith community. That one friend who knows how to listen. The person who shows up before we even know what to ask for.

Mohamed? He went to his mom.

That instinct—to reach for the people who know us, love us, and will not give up on us—is one of the most powerful forces in health.

At HealthFinders, we built our model on a simple idea: health happens when people come together.

I remember this clearly from our earliest days. We would gather in the church basement at our first clinic in rural Dundas for a diabetes class to talk about what it was like to live with diabetes. We talked about healthy eating, exercise, how to take insulin and other medication.

That is where I met Maria.

Maria did not have diabetes. She came because her sister had diabetes. To her sister’s diabetes class, in the church basement in rural Dundas, Maria also brought her children, her grandkids, her neighbors, su cuñado — Maria loaded up the car.

She even brought her dog to diabetes class because Maria knew something at her core: if her sister was going to get healthy, the people around her needed to be part of it.

Meeting Maria was an aha moment for me. I understood that, in that church basement, we weren’t just treating the people with diabetes, we were strengthening a community around the people with diabetes. And it started working.

Now, for many Latino families, bringing family — los tíos, primos y perritos — to appointments is second nature.

But the truth is, this is something all of us share.

We ALL want to be surrounded by people we trust when life gets hard.

Todos queremos estar rodeados de nuestra gente de confianza cuando la vida se complica.

Building around this simple idea, we have seen the profound impact this has, not just on the patients, but everyone around them. Their family, their community, and even their care team.

Sameena was a student intern at that same class handing out diabetes supplies — now she is a family physician serving in a rural community.

Maritza was our first care coordinator, now she leads our mental health team as a therapist.

Emily went from teaching that diabetes class to now teaching nursing students at St. Olaf and recently published her work on our opioid addiction program — the only program of its kind in our region.

Nuestra Wendy empezó con nosotros hace más de ocho años y ahora está coordinando el centro de salud del High School y recién graduada — la semana pasada — con su maestría.

This is what happens when healthcare is rooted in community: it changes the people receiving care, and it changes the people providing it too, in a way that supports us all.

The truth is, we need this now more than ever. This is a really hard moment in healthcare. Costs are up for everyone, coverage is harder to keep, and too many people are being asked to manage more costs and more care on their own.

In the last year alone, the number of people without insurance in Minnesota doubled.

We, our health systems, our communities, are in a moment more fragile than any I have ever seen. This moment is harder than COVID.

How do we make sure care stays local, trusted, and within reach?

HealthFinders is now part of that answer.

Every month, our neighbors come to HealthFinders for care that fits real life: a provider they trust, help navigating recovery, relief from a toothache, or support that doesn’t fit neatly into a billing code.

When the barrier is transportation, language, fear, or even just a safe place for a dog while someone goes to treatment, we work to solve the real-life problems standing in the way of health.

This is healthcare made for real life.

HealthFinders is a clinic, but we are also a community.

Faribault Public Schools gets this. Together, we built a health center where students can see a dentist, talk to a therapist, or get the physical they need to play basketball, all without leaving the building.

Owatonna gets this too. When a community group bought and renovated a building for shelter and transitional housing units they said, “We need HealthFinders there.”

Because that’s what healthcare looks like when it’s built around real life.

Porque así se ve el cuidado de salud cuando está basado en las realidades de nuestras vidas.

Housing is health. Relationships are health. Trust is health.

So what do we do when the system itself is struggling?

I think Maria gave us the answer: we gather our people.

That is what HealthFinders has always done. And now, communities are doing it with us. Faribault Public Schools. Owatonna. Partners who saw a problem and said:

Let’s be bold and build something different, together.

It takes all of us to build a health system that feels human.

I’ll be real for a moment — this work is hard. Hard on our team, and hard on me. Especially lately. There are days when the news, policy changes, and the needs on the ground feel like a lot to carry.

What keeps us going is remembering what is possible when people come together.

Lo que es posible en comunidad.

None of the people I mentioned tonight did this alone. They had people around them who believed in them. With that support, each of them did a little more than they thought they could. And because of that, what started small has grown into something real — something that touches all of us.

We aren’t just a clinic for your Latino neighbors — come to our waiting room and you’ll see all of Faribault there.

We are the home for not just the 5,000 patients we see, but family, friends, and now you — our neighbors.

All of us benefit when our community has care that is local, trusted, and built for real life.

This is our vision — our dream of what health can look like for our entire community.

Now we need to make it stick.

What we have built is different. It does not fit neatly into the usual boxes, and that is exactly why it matters. We are proving that care built on trust, relationships, and real-life problem-solving can work. But the very things that make this model effective are often the things traditional systems do not fund well. That is why we need community support.

Help us make health bigger than billing codes.

Help us build a system that makes room for real lives, real families, and real communities.

Help us create a place where all of our neighbors can find care they can trust.

Todos tenemos una parte. We all have a role to play.

If each of us does a little more than we thought we could, together we can create lasting change.

Now is the time to think big. Now is the time to be bold. And now is the time to come together and build the kind of healthcare our communities deserve.

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Keep the Conversation Going: Join a Health Circle

At Together for Health, Charlie reminded us that health happens when people come together. Health Circles are one way we continue that work beyond a single evening.

Health Circles are small community gatherings where neighbors come together to talk about health, connection, and what it takes to build care that works for real life. They are spaces for conversation, storytelling, learning, and imagining healthier communities together.

Whether you’ve been connected to HealthFinders for years or are just getting to know us, we’d love for you to join us.

Find an Upcoming Health Circle →