I believe the “proven community-based programs” that are being referred to are those evaluated within the Community Guide, a compilation of public health program research and meta-analyses (communityguide.org). While they use good data, they only evaluate what they decide is important, and thus many programs require a rather intrusive invasion of government into people’s lives. Little of the research focuses on free-market or personal responsibility initiatives, whether they are effective or not. Some of it does include research about private sector health insurance incentives to join a gym, etc, but that portion is rather small. The real issue, in my opinion, is that the researchers form their studies and research questions around their own ideological ideas, which tend to be more government-centric, leaving free-market/personal responsibility options virtually unexplored. Many of the projects are too expensive to be undertaken by the private sector in large scale (though this may also point to the fact they are not as successful as one would hope.)

Missouri actually does have a program that evaluates Public Health initiatives and the needs across the state. Its particularly innovative and a great research tool (I’d love to use the site for a project later, since it is just full of information.) It’s called the Missouri Information for Community Assessment and it will give data on all sorts of health and public health factors, based on areas or counties in Missouri. http://www.dhss.mo.gov/MICA/
Perhaps the state is just becoming better at targeting its programs, due to great databases like MICA? That’s a point not really made in the P-D editorial, unfortunately.