Of all the investment opportunities Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell presented during his Vision 75 address, the one he urged Grenadians to make first wasn’t in renewable energy, housing or technology.

It was in themselves.

Speaking to delegates during day one of the Grenada Diaspora Homecoming Forum, PM Mitchell issued a stark warning about the country’s health, arguing that unless Grenadians change the way they eat and live, no amount of economic progress will be enough.

In one of the most candid moments of his Vision 75 presentation, the Prime Minister suggested that Grenada’s greatest long-term challenge may not be economic at all, but the growing burden of preventable disease.

“We are eating ourselves to death.”

The remark came as Mitchell outlined his vision for creating not simply a stronger healthcare system, but what he described as “a healthy nation.”

“Our vision for healthcare is not a hospital,” he told delegates. “Our vision for healthcare is a healthy nation.”

Mitchell described non-communicable diseases as one of Grenada’s most pressing public health challenges, arguing that changing diets, increasingly sedentary lifestyles and unhealthy habits that have become normalised over recent decades are fuelling the crisis.

“Everything is imported. It’s all highly processed. It’s mostly imported. It’s very expensive and nutritionally deficient,” he said, suggesting that the country’s growing dependence on processed foods is contributing to rising levels of obesity, diabetes, kidney disease and cancer.

Reflecting on his own childhood, the Prime Minister noted how dramatically Grenada’s health profile has changed within a single generation.

“When I was growing up, obesity was not a thing,” he said. “Now I can see kids from five, six years old.”

He argued that modern lifestyles-more vehicles, more computers and increasing screen time—have fundamentally altered the nation’s relationship with physical activity. But while those changes have played a role, Mitchell insisted that personal responsibility must also be part of the solution.

“If we don’t deliberately, as a nation, take stock and recognise that we are eating ourselves to death, that we are not exercising… it won’t change.”

The Prime Minister also pointed to what he described as the growing number of young people developing chronic illnesses once more commonly associated with older adults.

“It wouldn’t change the fact that more and more young people are having kidney disease in their twenties and thirties,” he said, revealing that he was due to attend the funeral of a former schoolmate later that day who had died from complications related to kidney disease.

“This is not fancy talk,” Mitchell told the audience. “This is real.”

Throughout the address, Mitchell repeatedly returned to one central message: healthcare should not be measured by the number of hospitals a country builds, but by its ability to prevent people from needing them in the first place.

“When we talk about healthcare, it is not about building the hospitals,” he said. “It’s about making sure that the primary healthcare system and the education that comes with changing behaviours gets us to appreciate the need to make ourselves healthier.”

He identified diabetes as one of the country’s most pressing public health concerns, arguing that many of its devastating complications can be avoided through healthier lifestyles and better education.

The Prime Minister also challenged members of the Grenadian diaspora to play a greater role in that effort-not simply by supporting healthcare after illness occurs, but by helping to prevent it.

“The opportunities for members of the diaspora… are for primary healthcare, for education,” he said, encouraging Grenadians abroad to share their knowledge and expertise to help change behaviours before disease develops.

“It is not always… the things we want to get to a point where you don’t have to send back things,” he explained. “We actually want to never get to that fact.”

Mitchell also argued that tackling Grenada’s health crisis will require confronting long-standing cultural habits surrounding food, alcohol consumption and exercise.

“There are cultural habits that we are going to have to challenge,” he said, maintaining that many of the illnesses placing increasing pressure on the healthcare system are preventable.

“Healthcare… all of it is preventable.”

Vision 75 is often framed around new industries, renewable energy, investment and economic transformation but Prime Minister Mitchell made clear that none of those ambitions will matter if the country’s greatest resource-its people-continues to be undermined by preventable illness.

“If you’re healthy,” he concluded, “then we can do all the things that we are talking about.”