Connect Live | November 4, 2021
Story 59

Joyce Newmyer: Welcome to Connect Live at Adventist Health. I'm Joyce Newmyer, the Chief Culture Officer at Adventist Health and your host for Connect Live. Live this week, a new CEO for Adventist Health, healthcare and well-being, and stories are everything. A new CEO for Adventist Health. Last week, the Adventist Health board chair, John Friedman, announced that Kerry Heinrich has been appointed to serve as the next Adventist Health chief executive officer. Kerry, who has led Loma Linda University Medical Center, Children's Hospital and Behavioral Medicine Center as CEO, has been a member of our board for seven years and brings a deep understanding of our mission and culture to his new role.

Scott Reiner, Kerry, our board and system cabinet will work closely together to ensure a successful leadership transition between now and the end of the year. So, a warm Adventist Health welcome to Kerry. Today, I'm delighted to welcome our guests, Dustin Aho and Melanie Cumbee. Thank you to both of you for joining me.

Dustin Aho: Pleasure to be here.

Joyce Newmyer: Dustin, you're the Operations Executive for the Well-Being Division of Adventist Health, and Melanie, you're the Administrative Director for Associate Well-Being for Adventist Health Roseville. So, let's start with you, Dustin. Why is well-being the new focus throughout the healthcare industry and other industries, as well?

Dustin Aho: I love this question. It is interesting. You get on an airplane and an airplane says, we care. The flying company says, we care about your well-being. You go to shop at a store and they are now defining themselves as well-being stores, right? Or technology companies like Apple and Fitbit. If you Google well-being, they're well-being companies. So, I think the simple answer to your question is market demand, right? If for-profit companies are now declaring themselves to be well-being companies, it's because they believe that's where the market is going. So, what I find interesting is why is the market demanding something different now than they did in the past? As I think about it, I think there's two things I would highlight. One, I think there's a little bit of a generational reality starting to take place right now, where younger generations are expecting different things from the market than they expected from before, and they are making that decision with their wallet.

Where are they going to go buy from? Are they going to buy from any tech company or one that is focused on something different than just tech? The second reality, I think, of why everyone's focused on well-being right now is we just lived through 24 months of everything changing. I think we're at a time of all-time low well-being. We're living during a time where people are tired and exhausted and stressed, and we want to be connected to things that are thinking differently. So, we're looking at companies in healthcare and saying, we expect something different from those organizations in the future than we've gotten in the past.

Joyce Newmyer: Thanks. That's helpful. So, Melanie, how is well-being experienced in the hospitals and the clinics of Adventist Health?

 Melanie Cumbee: Well, Joyce, first I have to say that I'm so in awe of our leaders and teams. We have to acknowledge, and I think Dustin just mentioned it, that it's been an incredibly challenging ... that's probably understating it, right, and for many really traumatic 18 months to two years. So, I think that's important to acknowledge, but in the midst of that, we've stayed locked into living into our mission, right, of living God's love, and it's created space for some amazing collaboration across the system. So, I love some of the things that I've seen that, for instance, our mission team has been leading workshops on compassion fatigue in Mendocino. We've got other mission leaders in Bakersfield that are providing training for nurses as they come onboard in resilience, so it's not an afterthought.

Other leaders at Sonora, our leaders have been rounding with spa water. It's fancy fruit-infused water, but just to thank our care teams for the work that they're doing and maybe to help nurses stay hydrated, because they're kind of notorious for not doing that. Another example, Lodi, the nutrition team there has been providing Blue Zones meals that are nourishing and delicious. I can just go on about the creative thinking across the system to support associate well-being.

Joyce Newmyer: It's helpful to hear about some of those things going on. Very creative, and I love the idea of increasing the resilience and the care for the caregivers. Dustin, you made a very intentional decision to redirect your career from ministry, mission and spiritual care to well-being. I know you pretty well, and I suspect you're going to tell us that this isn't as big as a shift as it may seem, but why did you make this career decision?

Dustin Aho: It's an interesting question. I've never really made what I would call strategic career decisions. It's not like I sat down and said, I've got a path for my life and that's what I'm going to go follow. What have been able to do over the last few years is hone in a little bit more on what I'm good at and what gives purpose in my life and what my purpose is. So, from kind of early on in my career, I decided that what gives meaning to me was bringing hope where there was a lack of, or a low hope reality. That's really meaningful to me in everything that I do. In ministry, that's what it was about. It was about hope. In high school chaplaincy, it was about hope. Then, when I found myself in a mission role at Adventist Health, it was about hope.

The other thing I'm good at is I'm a little bit of a disruptor, and I survive pretty well in the face of ambiguity. So, when you look at geeky guy meaning of life, purpose, what am I good at? What does the world need? What can you generate some revenue and some income from? And you start looking at all of those things. The world needs well-being in a different way today than even when I made the decision. I also feel like I can function a little bit intentionally in a disruptive space, even though it does give me stress. I can function in a disruptive space and be a change agent on that journey, and the interesting part about the well-being work is there is an opportunity to generate a pretty cool business out of it.

So those things, as they started to converge, became a really interesting space to work in. Then ultimately, the primary driver of all of it was it's a wonderful space to dedicate your life in bringing hope to communities and hope to individuals that might be struggling with low well-being. So, it, I can't claim it was a very strategic move at the time. It was, my life is about serving and about helping others find hope, and this just seemed like the next best step or opportunity to go build something that did that on a grand scale.

Joyce Newmyer: I love that that's built around the central theme of hope. I love that. So, Melanie, last question here. You shared with a us before that about 1,200 associates joined the Blue Zone challenge. Can you share with us where you see this challenge making a difference and is there a story that's been particularly inspiring?

 Melanie Cumbee: It's hard to narrow it down. I love focusing on hope and I think it's been making a big difference and just providing some of that hope. What's been unique about this challenge is that it's given us the opportunity to make Blue Zones really personal. How can I Blue Zones my life? It's also challenged us to be really intentional about our social well-being with our coworkers. So, we were asked to find a Blue Zone buddy, or create a Moai. If you don't know what a Moai is, a Moai is a word from the Blue Zone of Okinawa, Japan, and it's essentially a life group. So, I love the inspiring stories that are coming out of these Moai. So, one of our hospital presidents formed a Moai with her executive team, and they have been having robust discussions around themes and how many eggs and is a legume, is it a nut? Is a peanut a legume or a nut?

It's been a friendly competition that's re-energized a team. We've had another group that formed a Moai at White Memorial. They've been doing potluck Moais. All with COVID in mind, but bringing Blue Zone meals and recipes to share. We're hearing from other associates across the system that they're taking time to prioritize their self care, their own well-being, their emotional health, and really finding that better balance for work-life integration. So, so many stories, and it's been really, really beautiful to see.

Joyce Newmyer: Thank you for sharing that, and thank you to both of you for joining us today. It's been inspiring to hear more about healthcare and well-being. Our final story today is stories are everything. Jason Wells, Adventist Health's Chief Strategy, Consumer and Innovation Officer, still remembers what happened 10 years ago vividly. When his wife's pregnancy became dangerous to both her and their unborn daughter, their family was forever changed. In his own words, "I now look at every single person at our clinics, in our hospitals, knowing they're in the middle of some story, that to them is everything.” To watch his family's story, visit AdventistHealth.org/story. Friends, thanks for connecting live. We'll see you here again next week, and until then, let's be a force for good.