Taking Healthcare by Storm: Industry Insights with Jack Bruce

In this episode of Taking Healthcare by Storm, Quality Insights Medical Director Dr. Jean Storm speaks with Jack Bruce, Director of Population Health and Wellbeing at IMA Financial Group (Atlanta), Affiliate Member of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, and founder of WellBirds.

Jack shares his transition from traditional HR to focusing on employee wellness through birding and nature-based healing, emphasizing the mental and physical benefits of nature and the critical role of leadership in fostering positive workplace cultures.

If you have any topics or guests you'd like to see on future episodes, reach out to us on our website.

The views and opinions expressed by the host and guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views, positions, or policies of Quality Insights. Publication number QI-011626-GK

Transcript

 Welcome to "Taking Healthcare by Storm: Industry Insights," the podcast that delves into the captivating intersection of innovation, science, compassion, and care. 

In each episode, Quality Insights’ Medical Director Dr. Jean Storm will have the privilege of engaging with leading experts across diverse fields, including dieticians, pharmacists, and brave patients navigating their own healthcare journeys. 

Our mission is to bring you the best healthcare insights, drawing from the expertise of professionals across West Virginia, Pennsylvania and the nation.

Subscribe now, and together, we can take healthcare by storm.

Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Taking Healthcare by Storm. I am Dr. Jean Storm, the medical director of Quality Insights, and I am very excited to talk to today's guest. We are joined by Jack Bruce. He is an affiliate member of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, director of Population Health and Wellbeing, and IMA financial group and founder of Well Birds.

Jack brings a unique perspective to the world of employee wellness, blending human resources. Expertise, mental health advocacy and his passion for birding and nature-based healing. And I just need to say from someone who was in healthcare working on feeling like I was working in the trenches during the pandemic and in coming out feeling.

Very burnt out. That idea around nature-based healing, just saying those words, provides me some comfort. So I know that there is something very meaningful in pursuing that practice. In this conversation, we will explore how to build thriving workplace cultures, mental and physical benefits of connecting with nature and why lifestyle medicine may be the future of preventive care.

I am so excited to get started. Jack, thank you so very much for joining us today. Well, Dr. Storm, I I'm very grateful to be here. Love that introduction.  Love your enthusiasm and appreciate what you are doing with this podcast. thanks so much for the opportunity to be with you. Well, You're welcome.

So I wanted to start at the beginning. What inspired your transition from traditional HR work to a deeper focus on population health? And wellbeing. And what sparked your interest in integrating nature and birding into workplace wellness? a great, great question and I would say that, you know, I've always been  people-centric.

Had a people-centric uh, mindset. And, back in 2004, I took on a uh, chief, operating officer role for a very small firm here in Atlanta. And being in operations, HR was a part of that role and. It was one of the reasons why I was hired there was because some of my interest in human resources, but our firm worked with employers to find the  best medical insurance for their employees.

And we worked with them to help keep their medical costs down and things along that nature. I was heavily involved in the HR community uh, particularly with the Society of Human Resource Management the Atlanta chapter. Volunteered with them  particularly with programming of their events and got my certifications with uh, SHRM and SPHR, and S-H-M-S-C-P and was really loving hr and I was one who always liked to put the focus on the human.

The human resources and I can't really tell you when it happened, but sometime during that period I began to feel a tug toward employee wellness.  I was getting antsy and some of my operations role, and so I began to talk to some. Trusted friends and began networking.  I had talked to my employer and said, Hey, I'm really wanting to get more into employee wellness.

And the owner said, well, you know, we, that's really not a fit for what we're doing here. And so I began to look outside and, uh, even talked to a couple of our competitors, and one of those referred me to a fellow by the name of Jack Curtis. He's the head of engagement Health Group. And Jack is like a.

Employee Wellbeing Guru, and he was a mentor for me and he has become a good friend. But in that conversation with Jack, he introduced me to a book that  changed the trajectory of my career. Dee Edington, who was the director of the University of Michigan Health Management Research Center, had written a book called Zero Trends.

And in that book, he was talking about how we need to focus on the health and wellbeing of employees for two primary reasons. Now, I was already geared toward, hey, let's, I care for people, I love people, I want to help people, but he put it more into a business framework. In fact, the subtitle of his book is.

Health as a serious economic strategy. But he made two key points about why employers need to get into employee wellness, and one was to help reduce healthcare costs, but then the second was to improve employee productivity, which is one of the buzzwords within human resources. But what I also liked about what Edington wrote was that he gave a definition of health, which I continue to use today whenever I talk on health and wellbeing.

And  he said it this way, he says, health is not the absence of disease, but is the presence of energy and vitality. And you know, I think of one of your. Recent guest, Dr. Storm, who was talking about the difference between lifespan and health span. So it's not just longevity, but it's the quality of life, and that's what Edington was getting into.

 He also talked about focusing on trying to not just trying to get the sick healthy, but to keep the healthy. Healthy. And I think that's one mistake that a lot of employers make, is they focus on disease management and they forget about the people who aren't costing them anything yet. And he was saying, no, you, we need to work on those people too.

We need to help them stay healthy. He talked about creating positive cultures  culture  of health. And so after reading that, I go. That's where I want to go. That's what I want to do. And so  as I said, I began looking, I eventually ended up at an employee benefits captive that had a strong wellness focus.

It was a startup and, uh, it started up, but it didn't keep going. After a year and a half. They closed their doors and then I went into doing employee wellness for the Atlanta office of IMA financial group here in Atlanta. So that's how I got into the employee wellness side. But as far as what sparked my interest in integrating nature and birding into the workplace, it was that birding did it.

When I started birding and I consider myself a fairly new birder, but when I started birding, I discovered that it incorporated so many elements of wellbeing that I tried to communicate to the employees that I was working with, with, uh, with our employer clients.  There was physical activity and movement.

There was a social component birding. It has a tremendous social component and it contributes to our social wellbeing. And then there were just the mental health benefits of being outdoors, which are, touted quite often. But when I saw all of that, I began to study the wellbeing benefits of birding and getting outdoors.

I started writing. Book on the wellbeing benefits of birding, and that naturally led to incorporating into my work with my employers.  I formed well birds, but at the same time I began working with our clients on doing wellbeing campaigns around nature.  I now do these webinars and seminars on the mental health benefits of getting outdoors.

 Last month I told. spoke to a Society of Human Resource Management Conference to these HR leaders about how to incorporate nature into your employee wellbeing programs and strategies, and  I'm loving it. And so that's, how all of that got started. I will just say, I, one thing you said, and I think it was the subtitle of that book  you mentioned  health is a serious economic strategy.

It's, I mean, it's, yeah. We, We don't act that way but I most definitely feel it is, yeah. So you've worked in a variety of workplace settings. What does an optimal workplace culture look like to you? I think a lot of organizations, systems  are thinking about this question and what elements need to be present to support both employee wellness and performance.

You know  when you ask about what elements need to be present I remember a few years ago I was, sitting in a room with some of our consultants that worked with our clients and one of them told the story of how the previous week. He was at a meeting with one of our construction clients, and this particular employer has multiple locations throughout the, throughout Georgia and the Southeast.

But what this employer had done is that we had worked with them to place health coaches at each of these locations that worked directly with their employees and so on. This particular day that our consultant was there, they had these coaches. Reporting on what was taking place in these various locations, and some of them were calling in remotely.

 The CEO of that construction company was also in this meeting and while these health coaches were giving their reports, our consultant looked over at the CEO and he seemed to be very distracted. In fact, he said it looked like something was greatly disturbing him. In fact, he, it sounded, looked like he, he was even holding back tears.

So he seemed to be. Not really engaged. Something was bugging him. Something was bothering him, and didn't know, we didn't know what it was. So our consultant called him up the next day and let's call the CEO Bob. He said, Hey, Bob. He said yesterday in our meeting I, I was noticing you seem to be distracted.

You seem to be, something seemed to be bothering you. He says is, there anything I can do to help? You know what? Is there anything you want to talk about? And the CEO said, no, nothing was bothering me. He said, I was just overwhelmed by the difference that we're making in the lives of our employees. He was hearing all these reports from these health coaches talking about his individual employees who were making lifestyle changes, who were getting healthier, who were losing weight, who were reversing some of their diseases that, that, that were taking place in their lives.

And he was just so grateful that his organization was having an impact  on the lives of his employees. So if you ask me what is the most central element for employers, it starts at the top with someone caring for their employees. And that's what was taking place at that organization. The reason that they.

Bringing these health coaches in was because they cared for their employees as well as trying to increase productivity and reduce healthcare costs. But there was a genuine care and concern for their employees. I think that's at the top and in wellness circles we talk about that all the time. He says, if you really want something to work.

You gotta have a motivation at the top where folks really care for their team. So, so, so that's part of it.  I think another part of it is that employee wellness matters is that  it's not just a check the box something that, that you offer to, something to put on your hiring page, but it really, truly matters.

I think if you can put in coaching for your employees, whether it's digital, whether it's in person  whatever it may be, but if there's coaching available and sometimes even incentivized, I think mental health matters.  I tell you, I can't tell you how many times I've had employers say, Hey why, can't we do for mental health?

And we start having that conversation and. They don't wanna spend any money on it.  They don't want to invest in it. So I think you have to care about the mental health of your employees, but also be willing to, spend and do whatever's necessary  to help them. That may be training, that may be tools that may be giving access to providers.

I think employers also need to try to reduce the stigma. Around mental health challenges  I saw something beautiful just a couple of months ago. Our own organization, we have 2000 employees across the country, and they did a webinar where two of our associates shared their mental health journey.

I almost missed the call, but then I decided to join it at the last minute and I was blown away. By the vulnerability  of sharing of the two individuals that told their story. One was in a, a pretty high leadership role within the company and they show, shared very deep personal stories of their mental health challenge.

And it was phenomenal. And I what I liked about it is that by them test sharing their story, they normalize the mental health conversation. They talked about their, the signs of their struggles and what others could notice and recognize.  They talked about how we and our organizations need to lead with empathy.

Not always expertise  but with empathy.  And I, I love, what they did there. And I think any organization who can find way to get their team members, their employees, to open up and share what they are doing too. Meet their own mental health challenges is gonna help break that stigma.

And that's a part of the culture. There's other things that make a, strong culture, accountability, being results driven, adaptable, knowing how to change all of those things. But I focus there just a couple I think that are, are important from the wellness side. Yeah. And I, I guess I'm gonna ratchet up this question a little bit.

You know, I have spent a lot of my career in nursing homes and hospitals and these. Environments are incredibly challenging for staff, for patients, residents who are receiving care in them. So how do you envision maintaining or building a positive workplace culture in these high stress? Always resource limited settings.

Yeah, it's  that's a great question. And quite honestly I'd, I'd love to hear your take on that and  why, what you think. 'cause I think you're much more of an expert in that, area than I am. Some of the healthcare clients that we work with, they are faith-based in they're nonprofits and, resources are a very real challenge for them.

We have some that have, you know, the retirement communities or long-term care campuses or social services home for disabled nursing homes and care  in home care  and things of that nature. And so what's needed in those situations is gonna be the same as what's needed in any organization.

We need to have a leadership obviously that, that cares.  There needs to be  you know I like using the word employee centric, but caring for the employees and then providing the tools and resources.  I think in those environments we need to find a way to practice what we preach.  I was in a hospital this weekend with a family member.

And I went down at lunch to the cafeteria and there's all these different stations where people can grab whatever they want to eat. And the line that was the longest was the one that was serving the comfort food  the fried stuff, the butter laden information, all the sweets, things of, that nature.

And these are the very people that are seeing. How lifestyles are wrecking our health, and yet  we're continuing to eat the things that are going  to harm us. And  I know that challenge I know how I grew up. I know the challenge I have now, but I think if we can learn in these settings to practice what we preach and maybe take what we're trying to tell our patients to apply it to our own employees.

 We had a client  a year or so ago that  did in-home care, did some hospice care and had some uh, nursing homes and they were concerned about stress and burnout.  they asked me to try to find a speaker for them who could talk on that. And they wanted someone that they felt could.

Understand what they were going through, and I was able to find a, another  physician who was able to come in and talk about stress and burnout. And so we had a physician talking to clinicians and other physicians and healthcare workers, someone who understood them. They recorded it for those that weren't able to attend the live session.

 They did a couple of those with this doctor. And I, think things like that  are very helpful. They even incentivized their employees to watch that even if they couldn't do it in person. All those who watched the uh, the, the webinar, the seminar,  uh, were then entered into a drawing for a very nice prize.

So they wanted their people to experience that event.  Attorneys are another high stress environment. We have a similar thing going on this month with one of our clients. They wanted a stress and burnout speaker, so we were able to find one to go in for them. Another one of the employers I'm working with this week this month is  they wanted to have a talk on seasonal effective disorder.

So we brought, we were able to find a local therapist who specializes in that area, and he's gonna be talking to them  about that. So I think lunch and learns or webinars, and obviously it needs to be recorded for those that can't make it, but also incentivizing people to watch it is very helpful.

And then we, I don't work personally with this group, but some of my fellow workers on our whole health team do, but we have a group of. 15 senior living clients that run nursing homes and, in-home care and various levels of care for their patients and their clients. And they do a number of things that  will help their employees.

So if there is GA gym on site for clients and patients, they will allow their employees to use that. Some will. Offer discounted gym memberships. Some will offer social activities that don't have a big price tag just to get people talking with each other and increasing that social connection.  They will put wellness committees together if they have a wellness director for their patients.

That person will be a part of that committee. Some of them will offer challenges where they give points and rewards and raffle drawings for participants. One of these employers even has. What they call Mindful Mondays Wellness Wednesdays and Fresh Food Friday. So they're doing something, you know, every day of not almost, every day, all through the year  three days a week.

Some are offering financial wellness courses. Free to, to their employees. Some are promoting the EAP, the employee assistance program. Always tell employers, don't just promote that at open enrollment season. Do it all year long. Let your employees know what is there.  Some will go more expensive route and do some biometric screenings and things of that nature.

But I think one of the things  in these high stress environments, it's, we've gotta think preventive. We've gotta think year round care. A lot of employers will like to have a wellness campaign, say in October, and they'll do it on Breast cancer or wellness, or cancer or wellness, or they'll use February to talk about heart health.

My encouragement to employers is to  do a campaign at least once a month.  Keep your health of your employees front and center all year long. And then another thing I would, recommend Dr. Storm is, If the organization can afford to have at least one of their team members as a part of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine I think that would be very helpful.

 As you mentioned earlier, I'm an affiliate member 'cause that's not, I'm not a clinician and this organization is for doctors, physicians healthcare clinicians, and I, so I'm an affiliate member, but I love going to their conference.  I've been to it twice, is having it right now, this month in November in Dallas.

 But. I learn so much when I do that and I can't imagine what it's like for  people like yourself or the doctors, physicians to hear from their peers, talk about what we need to do for lifestyle, uh, medicine. And they focus on  their seven pillars optimal nutrition, physical activity, restorative sleep, stress management, connectedness, and then avoiding risky substances.

But  the credibility of peers. So there's, I don't think there are any easy answers for these high stress environments, but it's those little things that we can do all year long that can make a difference in the lives of our employees. Yeah, I will say I agree with everything you said, that holistic view, and I now wanna get into what I am.

I'm I very curious about and very interested in that you've championed birding as a wellness tool. So can you walk us through the physical, mental, and emotional benefits? Birding, especially in today's world, it's so fast-paced, so technology driven, you know, what is the next best thing?  You know, birds are, are just here, right?

They're just with us.  And so you know, can you walk us through birding as a wellness tool?  Absolutely, and I, I love, talking about birds and, birding and I, I consider myself  I may have said this earlier, I consider myself a fairly new birder, but I had been doing an HR and, employee wellness for a number of years when I got into birding and.

birding, by the way, for those just to understand it it's a verb and a noun, but birding is simply just going out, looking for, and identifying birds. So if you're going to find birds, trying to identify them, trying to see 'em  that's what we call birding. So when I began birding,

I was going, wow, this is really good. All of these things that I've been trying to get the employees to, to do are found in this fun activity called birding.  The first thing that jumped out at me was that  it got us movement. I think we, we all know that sedentary lifestyles. Lead to all kinds of physical ailments and problems and disease  birding.

Gets us out, it gets us moving.  Now there are different forms of birding, and sometimes it can be very uh, sedentary.  You can, you know, sit in, sit at your breakfast room table and look out the window and, bird or bird watch. But for the most part, birding gets us moving. It gets us. It gets us outside.

We're walking, we're climbing.   It helps us with our balance and our flexibility because when we're out there chasing a bird, it's not always on the path that we want to go on and we have to go some places that, that requires some extra movement and, some careful steps and things of that nature.

So it helps with balance and flexibility. We're outside. You can bird at night, but many times it's often in the daytime and you're getting your vitamin D  being in the outdoors helps us sleep and so all the benefits of just being outdoors help us physically. I mean, I'm sure a lot of your listeners are familiar with the study that was done on gallbladder patients a number of years ago, but they found that.

The gallbladder patients that had gone through surgery and were in a hospital, those that looked out a window, that looked out onto trees, went home sooner than those that looked through a window  that went to a brick wall.  There's another study at a Michigan prison where the inmates that had a view of farmland.

Versus the view of a prison courtyard had 24% less illnesses. So there's just something about getting out in nature that improves our physical wellbeing and birding gets us out there, it gets us moving. That moving leads to better blood pressure readings, improved immune function maintains our uh, muscle strength.

It reduces our body fat. It even enhances some pain control and extends our life expectancy. So it gets us moving and I, often will tell when I'm speaking to birding groups, I'll say, listen, even if you think you're not gonna go out and see anything new, anything unusual, an hour of birding where you're not seeing anything new is better than an hour of sitting in front of a screen.

Uh, so I love how it, it moves us and then there are the mental wellbeing benefits of birding.  So all of those things and your listeners know this, but we can't compartmentalize our wellbeing. So if something improves our physical wellbeing, it's automatically going to. Assist our mental wellbeing because the two are so connected.

So that vitamin D and that exercise is going to help our minds. Same thing with social wellbeing.  It's amazing how social birding can be. I have a large majority of my friends now are birders and we talk, we chat, we meet up. Bird together, we're in a part associations   we have a lot of fun that contributes to our mental wellbeing.

 There's been some studies to show that even bird songs will  enhance how we feel. I have, there's this one bird. That comes south during the winter. It's called a white throated sparrow. And during the summertimes  it's up north.  But in the wintertime they come south and they've just come back into town the, uh, last couple of weeks.

whenever I hear those things call  it melts my heart. I don't know what it is about that bird, but I love hearing it and, it lifts my, my, my spirits. But there, there was another study done. This one was over in the UK a number of years ago, but they looked at 20,000 adults and they did some testing on them  and talked to them and they found that there was a certain group outta these 20,000 adults that generally felt better than the rest of the group.

And what they found the difference between these select few within the 20,000 is that they had spent. Two hours outdoors the previous week. And it didn't matter if they, it was two one hour sessions or four 30 minute sessions, or eight 15 minute sessions. If they spent two hours outdoors the previous week, they felt better that week.

And so birding gets us outdoors, gets us in touch with nature and. You know I, love as well talking about all, you know, a book I would recommend is The Dasher Keltner's, all the New Science of Everyday Wonder. But when we experience all, and we can experience it in nature, obviously, when we just see something, it makes us ooh and awe.

It gives us goosebumps. But when we experience awe, it does something to us mentally.  Kelly McGonigal, who is a,  professor out at Stanford University, she wrote that people who make more frequent visits to natural spaces are also more likely to feel that their lives are worthwhile. When we experience awe, it gives us that sense of a small self, that there's something bigger than us, there's a greater purpose than we are.

 They did a study of people, a journal, entries of people who went to national parks and they kept finding the same words over and over. Love Lifetime world, and. God. And you know, our employees need purpose. They need meaning in getting them outside, experiencing the natural world. Does that. And as a birder  we could spend the rest of this time talking about encounters I've had with birds that were absolutely amazing,  that blows the mind  that create that sense of awe.

And, uh, when birder's experiencing that, it's improving their mental health. but I love talking about the brain health benefits of birding, which contribute to our mental health benefits.  I will sometimes speak to some older groups of folks, and I'll like to talk about how birding.

Can be one of the best things we can do to enhance our brains. You know, there's the myth that crossword puzzles are one of the best things to do.  I read a book by Dr. Aisha and Dean Za out at Loma Linda and their books Alzheimer's, solution and they talk about, in that book, they don't talk anything about birding, but they describe it perfectly.

They say it's pushing through the areas of discomfort in the face of challenge and exerting more effort than you might want to. That leads to successful cognitive aging. And when I speak to birding groups, I'll tell them, you know, we know once you get it, once you get past the Cardinals and the Blue Jays and the song Sparrows and some of these easy birds to recognize, it becomes hard a lot of times to differentiate what bird is what, and that becomes very frustrating.

But when we. Begin to get into that as hard parts. It is incredibly beneficial to our brains and the growth of our brains and prevents cognitive decline. And I love talking about how to keep going forward with that challenge of learning how to, determine what bird is what bird is, what?

I can keep going on that Dr. Storm.  I love that question. The benefits, the wellbeing, benefits of birding  are all over the place and I love sharing them. Yeah, I can tell.  I'll say  and I, we could probably talk for a lot longer about that, but I wanted to shift to something that I was very interested in on  your website, and that is Mental Health First Aid.

So you are a mental Health First Aid instructor, so what is Mental Health First Aid and why do you believe it's essential for more workplaces and communities to adopt this training? Mental Health First Aid is a program put on by the, uh, national Council for Mental Wellbeing. It started, you know, just before the turn of the century over in Australia, and then it was brought to the US I think, by Maryland and Missouri, and now it's a national program.

But what Mental Health First Aid does is that it is a training for adults how to recognize signs and symptoms of another adult who may be experiencing a mental health challenge, and then helps them to know what to do to help that individual. So  it doesn't make you a therapist, it doesn't make you able to.

 Diagnose people. It's a lot like what CPR does for  physical first aid. It's just what can you do to help someone before the professionals get there, what you can do to help get them to the professionals. And there are, five steps of this. It is  how we, the training, it's an all day training, but it, how to approach someone  what to say, what to look for.

And then how to listen to that individual to listen nonjudgmentally, how to give them reassurance and hope. Then how to encourage them with self-help, particularly if it's early signs and symptoms, and then how to get them to the correct professional help.   I began, every time I teach this training, I always begin by saying, I wish I would've had this training much earlier.

I think of so many times in my past when. I could have used this training to help someone, either my family, my friends, someone that I knew. I often say I wish people around me would've had the training so that when I was going through the challenges, they could have helped me and pointed me in the right direction.

But  the training is, for everyone.  Most of the training I do is for HR organizations and for employers. I've trained over 400 people in, Mental health First Aid. Over the last three years.  I'm wanting to do it for some birding organizations. I've done it for one here in Atlanta.

In fact  the National Audubon Society even includes it as one of the recommended trainings for  their volunteers and their staff across the country. But  it is, it's an excellent training. There are instructors all across the country. I'd be glad to help someone with that as well.  But it's a great training for, to teach us as lay people how to help, how to recognize that someone's having a mental health challenge, and then how to get them the help that they need. So, very important right now, so you're well Birds platform. You've created this platform for bringing together wellness and nature.

So what is your vision for where this work is headed and how do you hope it will transform the way we think about employee wellbeing and public health? it started as a book idea   when I, uh, started birding and I realized how helpful it was. I said, man I wanna put this in into writing. So I started writing a book and that, that can, that's where my primary focus lies.

I, I hope to get into the hands of literary agents within the next few weeks.  Love to see that get published at some point. So it's still a book idea.  I'm also. Wanting to use well, birds to deliver talks and the wellbeing benefits of birding and getting outdoors. So I'm doing that with birding organizations.

 But that's where I started. But I'm having a blast talking to people that don't know much about birding and talking about the benefits of it, and then seeing their eyes light up with all the cool things that are out there.  Particularly talking about the mental health benefits of birding and the social benefits and brain health benefits.

 And then, uh. continuing to develop resources for employers. I'm working with our team here at IMA and we're planning to roll out this next year a nature's Wellness toolkit for employers that'll provide year round campaigns. To how to use nature to enhance the wellbeing of their employees.

 Talking about anything from nutrition and sleep and movement and exercise and social wellbeing financial wellbeing. All of that's gonna be coming from the standpoint of, getting out into nature. Looking forward to that  and quite frankly, Dr. Storm. I just wanna be another voice.

Promoting the benefits of nature.  I believe that birding can be an entry point to falling in love with nature. And if we fall in love with nature, we're going to. Get out there, we're going to engage with it, and it's going to enhance our wellbeing. And I just wanna be another voice. There are some great voices out there.

There's a mindful birding network with, holly Thomas and Holly Mecker that are doing that when it comes to nature, there's the Health and Nature Alliance at Down in Houston.  The, uh, American College of Lifestyle Medicine has a subcommittee on Nature is Medicine.  There's the Nature RX program, which is much larger in Canada than it is here in the us, but these are doctors that are actually writing prescriptions to their patients to get outside, to get it, go to the park, to get out outdoors.

There's the Walk with the Dog Pro program. Dr. Mark Campbell and Steve Otero have a, you know, their program with Nature of Wellness that where they're sharing about the benefits of wellness uh, of nature rather.  There's retreat and outdoor organizations focusing on mental health.  There's organizations that do fly fishing to help act as.

Service personnel deal with mental and emotional challenges, their outdoor retreats for veterans suffering from PTSD. There are addiction recovery centers that are incorporating nature into their programs.  The list could go on and on and I'm just hoping well, birds is gonna be one of those voices and provides an entry point for others to experience birds and nature for the benefit  their own well wellbeing.

I agree wholeheartedly. Jack Bruce, thank you so very much for joining us. If people wanna find out more about well, birds and everything we talked about today, how can they do that?  Well, Birds.com, that's W-E-L-L-B-I-R-D s.com. Uh, that's where you can find me. And then I'm also on LinkedIn at Jack W. Bruce. those are some of the, some of the better ways to find me. But I've enjoyed talking with you and thanks so much for the opportunity to share. I've enjoyed it as well. And I wish you continued success in 2026. Thank you very much, and you as well. And again, thanks so much for what you were doing with taking healthcare by storm.

Thank you for tuning in to Taking Healthcare by Storm: Industry Insights with Quality Insights Medical Director Dr. Jean Storm. We hope that you enjoyed this episode. If you found value in what you heard, please consider subscribing to our podcast on your favorite platform.

If you have any topics or guests you'd like to see on future episodes, you can reach out to us on our website. We would love to hear from you.

So, until next time, stay curious, stay compassionate, and keep taking healthcare by storm.