A Healthy Workforce Is The Key To Community Development

Growing communities are built with healthy workforces.

If a worker isn’t healthy, that worker can’t hold a job, support a family or contribute to the economic growth of the community.

When I worked for the Delta Regional Authority, which serves 252 counties and parishes in parts of eight states, we developed a diabetes awareness program with the assistance of my current employer, The Communications Group.

We determined that we should start emphasizing such things as better eating habits.

Diabetes classes and visits to nutritionists by patients with diabetes are associated with lower hospitalization rates and reductions in medical costs.

Many people don’t associate such efforts with traditional economic development.

Trust me, few things were more important in our region than improving the health of the workforce.

“Self-management is the cornerstone of modern diabetes care, and providing patients with the information, skills and support they need to manage the disease is a critical issue for health-care providers and systems,” according to a report in Diabetes Care.

“Self-management education can be provided in a variety of settings to patients with diabetes.”

A study of 18,404 patients found that having had any type of educational visit was associated with $11,571 less in hospital charges per person after accounting for the potential of demographic factors, other illnesses and hospitalizations prior to the diabetes diagnosis.

The study speaks for itself. And it provides a map for what should be a key part of your community development plan.

In addition to offering free health screenings across the region, our Healthy Delta initiative:

♦ Operated a call center with a toll-free number so callers could get free diabetes risk tests and receive help in accessing resources in their area

♦ Ran a media outreach campaign to educate people about the diabetes epidemic

♦ Worked with more than 1,700 churches across the region to encourage pastors to talk to their members about the risks of diabetes

Meanwhile, in our strategic development plan for the region, the organization pledged to:

♦ Work with employers, other government agencies and additional partners to reduce the number of people suffering from chronic conditions such as diabetes, obesity and heart disease

♦ Continue diabetes prevention, education and outreach efforts

♦ Form additional public-private partnerships to improve the health and productivity of the workforce

♦ Continue to bring physicians to the region through a visa waiver program that allows foreign physicians who are trained in this country to work in medically underserved areas for three years

Do you have similar initiatives in place in your community to improve the health of the workforce?

If not, why not?

It’s just as important to your community’s advancement as building roads and creating business parks.

If your community is to be all it can be, better workforce health must be a major component of your vision for the future.

— Rex Nelson