Chamber Amplified

From Public Health to Productivity: Why Businesses Should Pay Attention

• Findlay-Hancock County Chamber of Commerce

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Note: This episode is a bit different than our usual format. Due to the level 3 snow emergency and being snowed out of the office, Doug wasn't able to access our normal podcast equipment. As a result, you won’t hear our standard intro and outro this week. We’ll be back to the regular format next week.

In this episode of Chamber Amplified from the Findlay-Hancock County Chamber of Commerce, Doug Jenkins is joined by Zach Thomas of Hancock County ADAMHS to break down the newly released Hancock County Community Health Improvement Plan and what it means for the local business community.

Every three years, community partners come together to assess the biggest health challenges facing Hancock County and identify priorities for action. This latest plan highlights recurring issues like access to care, housing, transportation, mental health, substance use, and chronic disease - topics that increasingly intersect with workforce stability, employee well-being, and economic competitiveness.

Doug and Zach discuss:

  • What the Community Health Improvement Plan is and why it exists
  • Key findings from the latest community survey and focus groups
  • What “access to care” really means beyond just having providers available
  • Why employers should care about community health outcomes
  • How businesses of all sizes can engage without becoming health care providers
  • The connection between housing, workforce recruitment, and long-term economic growth
  • How accountability and transparency are built into the plan through 2028

This conversation frames community health not as a social issue alone, but as a business issue - one that affects productivity, retention, recruitment, and quality of life across Hancock County.

If you’re a business owner, manager, HR professional, or community leader wondering how public health planning impacts your organization, this episode provides a practical, local perspective.

Music and sound effects obtained from https://www.zapsplat.com

Doug Jenkins:

Joined now by Zach Thomas of Hancock County Adamus. Zach, thanks again for joining us here on Chamber Amplified. Good morning, Doug. Good to see you. So always good to have you and to talk about these different uh community and health related issues. Uh the story that was out in the courier earlier this week is there that a new community health improvement plan has been released. So I think that's probably the best jumping-off point is let's talk about what the community health improvement plan is.

Zach Thomas:

Yeah. Every so every three years, um part by mandate and part by uh design of our community, um, we do a community health assessment and a community health improvement plan. So the hospital system is required as part of their accreditation by IRS to have a community health assessment completed. And so is the public health department for their accreditation standards. And instead of having multiple surveys happening and multiple community plans, there was a commitment several years ago to join collaboratively to do the assessment and the health improvement plan together. And so what it does is every three years there's a community health assessment where we survey the entire community about what they see are concerns related to health outcomes, uh wellness of the community. And then from that, we develop uh a health improvement plan in order for us to take action on some of those areas that we see that are of the greatest need for the community.

Doug Jenkins:

And let's talk about, we'll talk about maybe the sampling in a second, but I want to talk about what some of the bigger findings were because it's always interesting what comes up. Sometimes you see recurring themes, sometimes things kind of seemingly pop up out of nowhere. What were the things that stood out to you this time around?

Speaker:

Well, you know, what's interesting is that the um the survey over the last two, three times we've done it, seemed to uh always indicate the same types of concerns, uh, which are things we've been addressing in the community. So transportation, housing, access to care. Um, those always rise to the top. Um and the bigger question I think that came out of this most recent survey, even though those were still being uh driving the results, uh, was the concept of access to care and what does that really mean? Because a lot of our community, you know, there is there are plenty of doctors, there are our mental health providers, so people can get to someplace uh to get care. Uh, but the question is, what really does that access look like? Are people saying that I really don't have the transportation to get there? Or is it I'm not able to get to a doctor because the only time I can get there is on a Thursday at five o'clock and no one's available? Or I specifically like this doctor and therefore I can't get there, so my access is not that good. So that's really opened up that question is is digging deeper and what does that access really mean when people say that in the survey?

Doug Jenkins:

How do you then follow up on these issues? Are there a series of meetings or more surveys to come, things like that?

Speaker:

Um, so so once the survey was completed, um the the Be Healthy Now Hancock County Coalition, which encoura encompasses all of the partners that are involved in helping to promote the survey. So you've got your social service agencies, you've got your medical agencies and organizations, you've got mental health, you also have business partners, you also have community leaders that all play a part integrally with helping to move those work, those pieces forward. And so from that data, we look at those things that have come to the top and figure out what do we think are the best strategies to address those, and what are we currently doing that maybe is not effectively addressing it well enough that we need to improve in through the health improvement plan?

Doug Jenkins:

I'm curious, this is the nerd in me coming out when we talk about surveying. As you well know, when you do a survey of the community, there are a bunch of people who are like, yep, sure, what do you need? Let me help out. I'm I'm happy to fill out any survey you put in front of me. And then there's maybe an equal number of people like, I don't care about your survey, I don't want to see your survey. Do you ever have concerns about uh getting the right sample size in a community of our size?

Speaker:

Yeah, absolutely. Because um, you know, when we we actually have worked with a new vendor this year for us to do the assessment and the improvement plan. And in years past, the sample size has been really small, although statistically significant to effectively represent the community. We still didn't feel that it truly did to that reason to the degree that we wanted to. Like we couldn't even report on special populations or even age-level populations previously because the sample size was so small. With this new vendor, we were able to use a digital format of the survey. So that quadrupled the amount of people we could we could get responses. And we also conducted focus groups, so special populations. So there was a group of unhoused community members that met at the mission to speak. There were people that have lived experience in mental health or addiction that spoke. So we had multiple focus groups that provided that qualitative data that really helped us understand more clearly and get a better picture of what's happening in the community.

Doug Jenkins:

So obviously, with this being the Chamber of Commerce podcast, I always like to try and look at it through the filter, uh the lens of local businesses. What do the findings of this survey mean to the local business community in your mind?

Speaker:

Well, I would say that you know, every employer needs a healthy workforce. And um, you know, people taking care of themselves is critically important because if you're not healthy, you can't work well and therefore the bottom line gets affected. I often liken this to we do work in the mental health and addiction field with recovery-friendly workplaces where it's important to be supportive of those individuals that are struggling with something so that they can be healthy and continue to contribute to their employment and for their well-being as having a steady job. So it's imperative that the business community is really engaged in the health improvement plan because um, you know, they're looking for healthy workers and the community is wanting to build up people to be able to have to be productive. And so there's however they can support their own internal wellness programs and accent or uh complement what the health improvement plan is doing, it really goes hand in hand uh to helping build that strong healthy workforce.

Doug Jenkins:

Is this something that that you think is scalable? Because I know if I'm a small business, maybe I have you know three or four employees, what I'm able to do is a little bit different than a larger business with their own HR department. Maybe they have corporate standards that come down to address this type of thing. How do you scale it up and down uh business sizes for them to be active participants and helping to have healthy employees?

Speaker:

Yeah, I a couple of things come to mind, Doug, that over the years that have happened. So we we I know a small business in the community that has had challenges with uh employers struggling with um um substance use challenges. Um and so it you know, learning more about what those struggles are and how they can be supportive, it does take a commitment, whether it's uh even a large organization or small one, to be able to uh to be able to take time because there's a business to run. And so, and so um I I only have a small amount of time to work with my employees to think about their well-being because we've got it, we've got this business to take care of. But if there's a if there's a way for them to learn more a little bit about their employees that may be having challenges, whether it's mental health and substance use issues or if it's physical health issues that's preventing them to come to work, are there any accommodations that could be made easily that also support some of those social determinants things we're looking at in the health improvement plan?

Doug Jenkins:

I think uh, and and maybe this has been your experience as well, and maybe it's just by virtue of working with businesses that are involved in the Chamber of Commerce, they do seem to be more well-versed on these types of issues. I I think it's part and parcel with our business community that they do care about these types of things and want to get involved. It's just trying to figure out what their lane is, well, staying in that business provider and not maybe skewing into now I'm a I'm a health service provider for my employees as well. Uh, but it does feel like there's more openness to that maybe than there was even five, 10 years ago.

Speaker:

Yeah, I agree. I I know when we're outside of our community and we're sharing about the things that we're doing, we always lead about Hancock County always puts collaboration first. That we are so skilled in coming to the table, and as a cliche as that sounds, but it's true, um, that we don't make decisions without we have without having all those partners. And we've made a concerted effort to really include the business community around those tables. Uh, one for the education component, like you're saying, but also for us to get their perspective. Like what are they seeing are the challenges and how can we help uh collaboratively across the table that way. So so that I think that is one of the leading reasons why we have been able to embrace and engage the community, the business community, particularly in this work.

Doug Jenkins:

I think that the housing issue, and you said you talked about this in uh the courier article, the housing one is particularly interesting, not be not only because if you I think you mentioned if you have a home or have an apartment or somewhere where you feel safe, some of these other things will start to take care of themselves. But if you're not in a home, um then these issues start to compound on each other. But the other aspect is if we don't have the housing for the number of health employees that we need, then it's really hard to get that level of care here that we need to begin with. And then if you compound that, if you have people coming here and buying houses and living in the area that work in health professions, those tend to be maybe a little bit higher paying. So the quality of life goes up across the community there as well.

Speaker:

Yeah, I that that's that's completely true. And you know, you've seen the efforts that are happening across our uh Affordable Housing Alliance, the initiatives that the community foundation has been doing to look at the entire continuum of housing, uh Carstar community, of course, Hope House helping get people up on their feet, uh, and the city mission having you know the unhoused shelter, the uh low barrier shelter, which provides you know an immediate place to take care of folks so that we can lead them towards and help guide them into those positions where they can have uh well-being and a better outcome of life. It's true. So, you know, the housing work is happening in the housing coalition, uh, but yeah, it it definitely affects, and we've made a point within the community health improvement plan to include that work to demonstrate that it is happening uh as part of our social determinant work to look at that entire uh you know sphere of work that's happening related to wellness and well-being.

Doug Jenkins:

So the the plan is out now. If people want to take a look at it and read it in its entirety, maybe they just want to have chat GPT summarize it. I don't know. Uh, but if they wanted to check it out, what's the best way to do that?

Speaker:

Yeah, well, it's housed at the public uh Hancock Public Health's website. So they can they can visit their website and follow the links and and download it. Uh they can read it online as well. One of the things, too, that's on there uh is the report that is from our previous health improvement plan. And so we have also really made a commitment to wanting to show accountability to this work because often, Doug, what happens, and I think I mentioned this, is you know, we'll do we'll do the survey and we'll create the plan, and then people get busy in their day-to-day work because this is a collaborative effort. Uh, a lot of this is volunteer time to be able to move this forward. And so um we want to make sure there's accountability to the community to show that there's a commitment to improve these health outcomes. And so, you know, the the quarterly reports will be on that website, and people can see, and also if they want to get engaged and involved, it's not just the people that are doing the work specifically through agencies, but a community member can also be supportive. You have faith-based communities involved. So there is a place for everybody to get engaged in this process.

Doug Jenkins:

What does so so it's uh it goes through 2028, correct? Is kind of the what does short-term success look like? If if you had to pinpoint one or two things that you'd love to see when we go back and look at this as we do the next assessment in a few years, yeah, what would some short-term wins be?

Speaker:

Well, one of the one of the underlying or or the threaded goals through the entire uh improvement plan is connecting people to care. And really what that means is changing our our thought process when we're working with someone. So if someone comes into say uh the you know to an agency like Hope House or comes into the City Mission or comes in even to um you know any social service organization or a school or whatever, at some point there's an opportunity to say, hey, are you also connected to physical care? So when's the last time you've seen a doctor? And the intention is if we can get people to have a thinking about, oh yeah, I need to check up on my my ABCs every every year. So that's my my uh A1C, my my blood cholesterol. Um if I can check on that, then that's one step closer. So, really, if we can demonstrate by the time we're done with this three years that we have been able to institute or institutionalize that thinking process that I don't forget to ask that question with your clients. I think that will show that we've made progress. Uh, and that's something that everybody can be involved with.

Doug Jenkins:

And then again, as you said, anybody can be involved with this from uh from nonprofits to churches to everything else. Uh, businesses specifically, are there kits, are there resources available for them to either put out, directing people to uh whatever care they might need. Uh and if so, how do they go about getting that?

Speaker:

Yeah, so so another early step of this is developing, we're calling it the know your numbers campaign, uh, which is connected to that, that getting people to think about getting connected to physical health care. And so that's the early step that the health department and the hospital are working on. And so part of that will include uh those resource kits or toolkits that they can use for messaging. And so that would be a way that the business community could definitely get their hands on that. And then, you know, whether that's placed on a billboard or a bulletin board or it's an informational flyer that goes in a paycheck, something like that, that that will be part of this project, but it's how they can get involved.

Doug Jenkins:

Man, I don't want to talk about my numbers, Zach. They're stuck, they're stuck. I can't get I've plateaued. I've started jogging again, Zach. I haven't jogged in years. I've worked my way into it, and I'm still plateaued. We gotta work on that. I need to fix some numbers. Well, at least you know, though. That's that's the first step. Kind of there, they've improved, they're just stuck right now. I'm not happy about that. Uh, Zach, again, I I appreciate this. Uh, we always uh love having these talks with you. Uh you've been a great member of not only our board here at the chamber, but our our our hey our our youth uh leadership group. Why did my brain just stop there? Hancock Youth Leadership. We're recruiting for it now. I should know the name of it. That's right. That's right. But it's always great to have these perspectives, be able to bring them to the business community and have the business community uh act and keep those lines of communication open. I think we make a lot more progress that way. So thank you for all the work you do that way.

Speaker:

Thanks, Doug. And it's always great to have an opportunity to share the message and get people engaged and just you know help improve their lives a little bit better.

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Doug Jenkins

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