Transcription:
Community Health Important for Hospitals

Evo Terra: Sometimes living in a small rural community means less access to healthy opportunities. In Norton County, Kansas, the hospital and its health foundation are paving the way for more opportunities to make healthy choices to improve the lives of local citizens. Katie Wagner serves two roles in Norton. She is the Community Relations Director for Norton County Hospital and Executive Director of the Norton Regional Health foundation. She speaks to how she and others are finding ways to fund health projects outside the walls of the hospital and why this is important.

From the Plains or rural Northwest Kansas to you, this is Health In The Heartland presented by Norton County Hospital, where medical experts aim to empower health at any stage of life. I'm your host, Evo Terra. Thanks for joining me, Katie.

Katie Wagner: Thanks for having me.

Evo Terra: Can you speak to the rise of focusing on community health in Norton?

Katie Wagner: Well, when I started working in Norton five years ago, the hospital did not have a foundation to raise money for certain things that the hospital needed such as equipment, programming, scholarships, that sort of thing. So I started working here five years ago. We started the Norton Regional Health Foundation because we knew that in order for the sustainability of rural health care, we needed to have a foundation to raise funds.

And in addition to supporting the hospital, we also support community health projects. And that would be like walking trails in the community we've funded over the past five years. We funded a summer food program for children who don't have access perhaps to food when school's not in session. So there's the nutrition aspect.

We've partnered with our local health department, public health in tobacco cessation and some other kind of grant-funded projects as well. And so we believe that health and healthcare are both very important to our rural community because we want to have healthy people in the same way that we want to take care of them when they're sick and they need to come see us in the hospital.

Evo Terra: Absolutely. I think people who live in metro areas kind of get an understanding of why community health is important. But I'm curious from you, why do you think that rural areas should prioritize community health?

Katie Wagner: They always say that economic stability in a community, whether it's rural or urban, it kind of has a three-legged stool. So health is one of those. You need to have access to healthcare. People need healthcare. The other ones are education and a strong economic base. And so we know that we're a pillar of sustainability for a rural community in working in health. A lot of hospital foundations in my interactions with other directors don't really have that outreach piece of community health. It's more we're focused on the hospital. We're focused on getting the things that we need at the hospital.

But we believe that that outreach piece is so important for many reasons, because we want people to be healthy. We want them to live longer. We want them to live healthy lives. We don't really want them to have to be in the hospital. I mean, that kind of sounds weird as a hospital, you know, your business is taking care of people who are sick, right? But we want people to be healthy because we know that healthy people create a healthy economy.

our economy is agriculture, it's manufacturing. We have a state correctional facility and the hospital also is a major employer in this area. And we know we have to have a healthy workforce in order to take care of our friends and neighbors. So that's why the community health aspect is very important.

Evo Terra: Yeah, very very important. Now, I know that you were recently awarded a major multi-year grant to assist with community health projects. Can you explain some examples of the work involved with this grant?

Katie Wagner: Yeah. We won a grant recently through Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas. And it's their Pathways to a Healthy Kansas program. We're very thankful for this funding. They have several communities throughout the state that are funded and we were fortunate to be one of them. And they have us touch on six different pathways areas. And it's just like the community health outreach I was talking about.

So the first pathway is Community and Social Context. And what we're focusing on is leadership development. We're working with major employers here in the area in getting their employees engaged in leadership development, because we think that that's very Important. We want to have good leaders in our workforce. And we think that with employers buying into that, hopefully, they'll have a stronger healthier workforce.

The next one is Food. So we have lots of little pockets. I mean, in the urban areas, I'm sure, you have your farmer's markets and your food bank and then you have several grocers maybe. We only have one grocer. We have two in the county, but one here in the Norton community. So, grocers, restaurants, and how often do these people talk to each other? You know, how do they connect with one another and make sure that we are providing adequate nutrition for those populations of focus that may be food insecure. So, we're working on a food systems plan. That one's very exciting.

Healthcare is another one that, of course, I'm really engaged in working at the hospital. And every three years, we have to have a community health needs assessment. It's required through the Affordable Care Act. We need to assess our community and see where the healthcare system is doing well and where we're falling short. And when we hear about all of these things from the community, then we can make improvements. And so that's another one of the focus areas.

The next one is education. We have, again partnering with the health department, tobacco cessation programming, but also we need to talk about vaping among young people, K through 12, the rise of vaping and how that's affected our young people. So we're working on curriculum K through 12 for tobacco cessation and vaping as well. Also looking at our policies to see how vaping is incorporated into those policies. So that's on the education piece.

Physical environment. Again, I brought this up earlier with the trails. We have trails here in the community that we've helped fund, but there's little connectivity really around these rural areas. If you think about like the population base, I mean, you don't have very many people living in a rural community. You don't really have a strong tax support, tax base. And so you got to pick and choose what's funded around here. Sometimes we have sidewalks that lead to nowhere. We have kids walking in the street when they're going to the swimming pool. So we need to have better connectivity and we're working on a multi-modal transportation plan that would hopefully we would have a plan in place to prioritize the areas of need and make routes safer for pedestrian, traffic and bikers as well. So that's exciting.

The last one, the sixth one, is economic stability. We are focusing on family-friendly work sites, primarily, so again, engaging our employers. What are some of our policies? Do we provide a good work-life balance for our families? Do we have places designated for breastfeeding mothers? Do we have policies that allow for time off, parental leave as an example? One of the things that we really struggle with here is access to childcare. It's really hard to get into a childcare facility because there's limited spaces and they're maxed out. And so do we provide opportunities to maybe work remotely, have that time with your family? Maybe we need to all work together collectively to enhance the number of spots that are available for child care?

So economic stability, that's a big one. And we all need to work together, the major employers in the county to make that happen. So this grant is allowing all of these things to happen by providing the funding and the guidance to be able to do all of this outreach and hopefully improve community health.  

Evo Terra: Incredibly comprehensive set of projects out there, which, at least in my mind, I wasn't thinking about that from quite a comprehensive way, but it absolutely makes sense to hear you say that. So this question may be a little strange, Katie, but why should local healthcare organizations focus on these types of community projects?

Katie Wagner: I think people live where they want to live for a reason. And I think that that's really true in rural areas because maybe you were raised there and you just liked that lifestyle. You liked the slower paced lifestyle. You like knowing everyone you see at the grocery store or the gas station. Those who live in rural areas live there because they want to live there. They like the culture and they want to preserve the rural way of life. So we need to plan in advance to get all of these projects, like I mentioned before, underway, so that future generations can enjoy that type of lifestyle if they choose to live there.

So, we're trying to plan ahead because there's population decline in rural areas and there's fewer of us trying to do this work and make it successful. But agriculture is one of those things that's primarily a focus in this area and it will always be a focus in this area, like those other industries that I mentioned. And so we just have to work together to ensure that we have a strong community moving forward.

Evo Terra: Well, you're doing great work. So what advice do you have to other communities to get started doing similar types of work?

Katie Wagner: You know, I think that the local hospital or health department is a good start. If your community is not really engaged in this type of work, they can consider their capacity to take on community health as a focus. It is a lot of work. It takes a lot of manpower. But they might be surprised if they kind of take the lead on it, just like we did five years ago. The number of volunteers and the people who will be engaged to be able to help because they believe that it's important again for future generations.

And I always say too that my work is very balanced and that I work for the hospital. And just like yesterday, we had a major fundraising drive for new patient beds for our hospital. That major equipment purchase, several major equipment purchases we've had over the past five years, those are very important.

But what I say is that people will only be able to really see those type of changes, those types of improvements if they are a patient who is in that patient bed or the new CT scanner or whatever it's going to be. You're only going to see that if you're the patient getting that type of service. But you will see community health happen. You will see the trail being put in. You will walk your dog along the trail. You may take your kids to the Kids Cafe Summer Food Program. You see those type of changes out in the community. And so I think that there's a balance in that people see those types of community health projects. And once you get them engaged in community health, then you can also engage them in the importance of healthcare in the hospital. And that's how we are able to engage donors on both sides. So I think that starting again with the hospital or the health department, getting volunteers involved, letting them see community health is the way to go.

Evo Terra: such inspirational work you're doing up there, Katie. Thank you very much for that. And thanks for joining me today.

Katie Wagner: Thank you for having me again.

Evo Terra: Once again that was Katie Wagner, Community Relations Director for Norton County Hospital and the Executive Director of the Norton Regional Health Foundation. Thanks for listening to Health in the Heartland. You may find out more about Norton County Hospital at ntcohosp.com. I have been your host Evo Terra. Take care of yourself and others. Be well