A Decade of Partnerships with Hospitals
Since its inception, the Foundation for Healthy Communities has funded 120 grants for more than $1.4 million. These grants awarded to Ohio’s hospitals have seeded many innovative approaches to health improvement and dozens of community health collaborations that have led to long-term solutions to health issues. Many of the collaborations focused on parenting and family health, the first-three years of life care, elder and end-of-life care, reducing the incidence of low-birth weight babies, reducing the incidence of substance abuse, reducing the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases, and increasing physical activity.

In 2004, the Foundation began emphasizing the promotion of healthy lifestyles in communities by dedicating its grant resources towards a hospital employee wellness initiative known as “Hospitals as the Healthiest Workplaces in Ohio!” The goals for this 3-year grant focus were as follows:

• Hospitals are viewed as role models for healthy behaviors;
• Hospitals identify methods to engage their employees in the practice of healthy lifestyles which over the long-term determines ways to contain the rising cost of health care costs;
• As large employers in the community and the region, hospitals determine ways to recruit and retain its workforce by demonstrating hospitals care about the health of their employees, as well as their patients;
• Hospitals track results of wellness programs and share successes with the community-at-large, employers throughout the state and the media.

The overall goal is that employee health will improve, that wellness will become a part of the culture of the hospital workplace, and that prevention will be an incentive linked to employee benefits.