Just like a woman looking into the mirror, we in Allen County focus on our flaws.
We see litter, dilapidated buildings, broken- down cars.
So it was a welcome surprise Tuesday when a group of outsiders came to tell us we are, well, beautiful.
“Allen County, you are a winner!” exclaimed Dr. Richard Besser, in formally announcing Allen County is one of eight communities awarded the 2017 Culture of Health Prize by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
The prize puts Allen County on the map along with now 34 other communities who are successfully working to create a healthy place to live by bringing new jobs, new educational and recreational opportunities, and better healthcare opportunities to the area.
“Perhaps more importantly,” Besser said, “you will have your story told to inspire others and help them learn from you. And you will be connected in myriad ways to a network of other communities and leaders from across the nation.”
Besser is president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the nation’s largest nonprofit dedicated solely to improving health and well-being for Americans. The Culture of Health prizes have been awarded since 2013.
Along with Besser, healthcare leaders from across the state joined in Tuesday’s celebration that included tours of the construction site of G&W Foods, the Elm Creek Community Garden and the Lehigh Portland Trails. In the afternoon, Besser participated in a community conversation with about 25 Allen Countians involved in various aspects of public service.
U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran also addressed the morning crowd gathered in front of the Thrive Allen County office on Iola’s downtown square.
By taking a quick break from his Congressional duties in Washington, D.C., Moran said, “I’m better off being at a place where people can actually find something to do about healthcare.”
Moran congratulated those gathered “for working together to help other people live healthier lives. That helps us all. You are not only a role model for Washington, D.C., but a role model for communities across the state.”
“This award,” Moran said, “speaks volumes about the people who decided to make a difference for their community.”
ALLEN County was selected from more than 200 communities who underwent a rigorous application process.
“Right when I read your application, I scrawled in big letters ‘WINNER’ across the top,” said Julie Willems Van Dijk of the University of Wisconsin. Van Dijk is the director of the County Health Rankings & Roadmaps and the RJWF Culture of Health Prize.
Communities use the national health rankings as a marker in fighting things such as chronic diseases, smoking, obesity and poverty. Consistently, Allen County ranks in the lowest quartile in the state for advancing against such things.
“You demonstrated a community spirit that says ‘we’re all in this together,’” Van Dijk said. “That ‘nobody is going to tell rural Kansans that we can’t get something done. Yeah, things might be tough, but we’re scrappy.’
“You showed that you have community systems, like the community garden, that not only creates a garden but is also a place to socialize, a place to provide healthy food for people who might not be able to afford it, and an entity that teaches people life skills.
“That’s just one example of how you take one thing across so many levels.”
Van Dijk looked across to Ray Maloney, LaHarpe, who helped spearhead the Regional Rural Tech Center.
“You showed us you can say, ‘I’m going to cut through the red tape of educational bureaucracy and we’re going to get something done because we need jobs here.’
“And jobs are about health.
“We also were impressed with the way you use your resources. The way you use data. The benevolence of your community.”
MANY OF the institutions that help fund local initiatives were represented at Tuesday’s event by their presidents and CEOs including Dr. Robert St. Peter of the Kansas Health Institute, Virginia Barnes of Blue Cross Blue Shield’s Blue Health Initiatives, Billie Hall of the Sunflower Foundation, Dr. Bridget McCandless of the Greater Healthcare Foundation of Kansas City, Steve Coen of the Kansas Health Foundation, Brenda Sharpe of the Reach Healthcare Foundation, Krista Postai of the Community Health Center of Southeast Kansas and Ashley Goss, deputy secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.
Also attending were state representatives Kent Thompson, LaHarpe, and Monica Murnan, Pittsburg, who serves on the Health and Services Committee.
These leaders attended a “working lunch” to share their perspectives on the challenges that face Allen County.
Postai, of the Pittsburg-based CHCSEK, explained its presence in Allen County came from an invitation by Thrive Allen County because a needs assessment study showed a shortage of dentists in the area.
From a dental clinic in 2007, the clinic expanded in 2013 to medical clinic adding Drs. Glen Singer and Brian Wolfe to staff.
“Partners for 30 years, they called me and said they were tired of telling people they couldn’t help them because they didn’t have money. They didn’t want to open another chart to see they couldn’t help someone because they had an outstanding bill.”
As a federally qualified health center, the CHCSEK treats patients on a sliding scale according to their income.
“We provide care regardless of someone’s ability to pay,” Postai said.
In order to accommodate mental health and pharmacy services, the clinic plans to start construction of a new 15,000-square-foot facility on North State Street later this year.
The CHC clinic tends to more than half of the county’s population, Postai said. Of those, about 95 percent are living at 200 percent of the federal poverty level or below.
“The shift is definitely coming, though,” Postai said. “We’re moving to more preventative care. We’re shifting from the sickness model to the wellness model. It’s so exciting. I can’t tell you how much the staff is enjoying catching people before they are in dire circumstances.
At the dental clinic we used to primarily pull teeth. Now we are able to restore teeth because we’re catching people earlier and helping them learn preventive measures.
We’re able to give people their smiles back.”
“Allen County has many opportunities for improvement,” Postai said, noting the high rate of drug overdoses here. “We see an opportunity for intervention here. It’s a nationwide problem. The difference here is that you have people who identify the problem and then say what can we do about it.
“We love data,” Postai said, to which Besser asked how they use it, specifically.
DAVID Toland, executive director of Thrive Allen County, jumped into the conversation.
“We dig into the data and ask what’s the most appalling statistic that we can find that we can actually do something about.”
Upon discovery that 27 percent of expectant mothers in Allen County smoke, Toland said Thrive worked to galvanize support for smoking cessation programs. An instance is “Tobacco 21,” a program passed by the city of Iola in 2016 that requests merchants not sell tobacco products to youth under the age of 21.
“It all starts with the data.
“But I have to say, it’s humbling when we look at the county health rankings and realize we haven’t moved the needle very much, mainly because of the lives here lost prematurely.
But health behaviors, the things we can influence in the shorter term, we are getting better at,” Toland said.
Postai added, “The rankings help direct us on where we need to go. Obviously tobacco use is a huge problem in southeast Kansas. We smoke at twice the state rate. All the elements of poverty contribute to this.
“We know as a health center we can’t improve the economy. We can’t recruit a company to locate here. But we can improve the health of the employees,” she said.
Both Reps. Thompson and Murnan said they recognized the importance of expanding Medicaid in Kansas and were disappointment the legislature failed to override Gov. Sam Brownback’s veto of such legislation by only four votes.
“I have two critical care access hospitals in my district,” Thompson said. “There are nine hospitals in Kansas on the brink of insolvency. They don’t know how to pay the bills next week.”
Passage of Medicaid expansion in Kansas would mean a $1 million difference in federal reimbursements to Allen County Regional Hospital through the Affordable Care Act.
