New Community Focus report brings updated Springfield region’s data into focus

What does the Springfield region look like today - and where should it go next?

The Community Focus Report 2026 brings together local data and community perspectives to help answer those questions. It also marks a new chapter for the longtime resource, now housed at Missouri State University's Ozarks Public Health Institute (OPHI).

Today, the institute released the report to the public at an event hosted by the Junior League of Springfield and Springfield-Greene County Library District at the Hatch Auditorium.

What was once a biennial report is now a continuous program of data collection, community action and reporting. The Missouri Foundation for Health helped make that expansion possible with a $549,228 grant to OPHI last year.

Additional funding and support came from Community Partnership of the Ozarks, Darr Family Foundation, Hatch Foundation and the Tinkler family.

"My hope for every reader is that they find one thing in these pages that touches their sphere of influence and one concrete way to move on it," said Traci Nash, OPHI Community Focus facilitator.

The 2026 report examines 13 topic areas, up from 11 in 2024. The two new chapters are on food and faith, both developed in collaboration with CPO's Community Collaboratives.

Also authored in partnership with a collaborative, another feature of the report is a special section on the long-time red flag of locally higher rates of child abuse and neglect.

The themes that interweave most, if not all, chapters of the report include:

• Children and families
• Civic engagement
• Collaboration
• Changes at the state and federal levels

The report remains a collaborative effort among the five original funding partners: Community Foundation of the Ozarks, Junior League of Springfield, Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce, Springfield-Greene County Library District and United Way of the Ozarks.

More than 100 volunteers also contributed to the report.

"This report is the product of months of work by dozens of local leaders identifying what is working, what needs attention and where we should focus next," Nash said.

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