The Janesville Culver’s Scoopie Night Mary's Hospital - Janesville (SSM Health). At the time it was built, data showed that Rock County was one of the most obese counties in the state of Wisconsin. “The city manager at the time, Mark Freitag, was passionate about providing [the Fitness Court],” says Slapak. “He felt that providing another healthy activity was important for the community [and] SSM Health got on board with it.” For SSM Health, sponsorship of the Outdoor Fitness Court seemed like a natural fit, according to Megan Timm, SSM Health's Regional Director of Community Health. “Eric Thornton [SSM Health's president at the time] was really excited about this project,” says Timm. “You don’t have to have any money to enjoy this facility. It offers one more opportunity for people to access a space dedicated to exercise. Our goal was to have healthier weights in Rock County. This project fit really nicely into our top priority area.” SSM Health is part of the Health Equity Alliance of Rock County (HEAR), a local coalition whose stated goal is to advance health equity locally. HEAR brings together local healthcare providers, Rock County Public Health, and various nonprofit organizations to improve access to healthcare resources and increase positive health outcomes. According to Timm, bringing in partners beyond the healthcare systems and the county health department makes HEAR unique. “I feel strongly that [HEAR] is the most special coalition,” says Timm, who serves on HEAR’s Advisory Committee. “The work is done collaboratively with the people who are running organizations that are directly serving our community. And that’s a really important note when our top two priority areas for Rock County right now are mental health and housing.” SSM Health identified those two priority areas as part of their 2024 Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA). Tax-exempt hospitals are required to conduct a CHNA every three years and adopt a strategic implementation plan to address the needs it identifies. “When you’re an anchor institution, you do have a social responsibility to be thinking about what [are] the next steps for this community as a whole,” says Timm. “The needs assessment has allowed us kind of a vehicle to ensure that we’re staying committed and present in our community.” Timm says the needs identified by the CHNA “help us narrow our focus.” One may be surprised to see housing addressed as a factor in a community’s overall health, and particularly as a priority area for SSM Health. But data from Healthy Rock shows clearly that substandard housing and the lack of a stable place to call home pose a risk to the safety and physical and mental health of its residents. So how does a health system address the effect of housing on public health? “We try to tailor our community contributions specifically to what our community has told us are the issues,” Timm says. “Our top two issues are housing and mental health, and so when a community partner is doing that work, [we ask] what resources can we provide them.” The answer, according to Timm, may be financial resources in the form of a cash contribution; or staff time using SSM Health expertise to support an educational component or help programs get off the ground; or placing investment dollars into local housing opportunities. “Place-based investing is where we can take dollars …and actually put them into things like small business loans, for example, or into affordable housing projects. We have a lot of opportunities as a big system to leverage our investment portfolio, and not for a huge return. It’s not a grant. Getting principal back and maybe a little extra to keep [programs] sustainable is what we’re looking at, to help incentivize developers in our area.” Timm says too many workers in the area pay more than 30 percent of their income on housing and “we need to do better.” Another interesting bit of data on the Healthy Rock site is the revelation that despite having two large health systems in Janesville and multiple other providers in Rock County, Rock County is considered to be in a Health Professional Shortage Area when compared with the state and nation. “What we’re missing is a lot of family [medicine] docs,” according to Timm. “It seems to be harder to obtain doctors [who] can do that average, everyday work and want to do that.” Timm believes that a lot of new doctors are going into specialties instead of general practice because specialties pay more, a key consideration when paying back large loans. Timm says that it’s true that when you look at the local landscape, it appears to be “a lot of health care in one county. But the accessibility of it seems to be a complicated space for a lot of our patients. You might be able to get into your doctor, [but] it might still be 90 days before you can get access to that doctor.” Partnering with the Janesville Jets on a reading club to build a love of literacy SSM Health supports food insecurity initiatives like food drives with local partners like the Salvation Army When you’re an anchor institution, you do have a social responsibility to be thinking about what [are] the next steps for this community as a whole. www.forwardjanesville.com | 7
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