Last year, the Kansas Health Foundation published Leading Health: How You and 30,000 Kansans Can Help Communities Thrive to spark a conversation about Kansas’s dramatic fall in America’s Health Rankings and how we’re determined to reverse that slide. 

We’ve launched the Leading Health podcast, a companion to the book. Each episode will cover a chapter of the book, featuring Conversation Catalysts—podcast guests who will bring the book’s key concepts to life using examples from Kansas.

Our goal with the book, and now the podcast, is to flip the script from “health” as healthcare to “Health” as everything it takes for individuals, families and communities to thrive.

A Paradigm Shift

In the first episode of the podcast, as in the first chapter of the book, we talk about the concept of health vs. Health. 

Lowercase “h” health is confined to a narrow definition: healthcare, hospitals, insurance and so on. 

Capital “H” Health opens the conversation up to the all-encompassing determinants that actually assess the health of our communities as measured by America’s Health Rankings. Together, these determinants—social and economic, clinical and environmental, behavioral and more—define whether or not we thrive as a state.

That’s why we say Health is everything, and that’s a paradigm shift in the conversation. 

Listen to Episode 1: health vs. Health

A Leadership Challenge

Defining Health as everything also gives us a new lens on the issues we’ve been discussing and debating for decades, and it requires us to rethink how we show up. To lead the nation in Health, we cannot simply think of “health” as a healthcare issue. 

Health is a leadership challenge.

At the Kansas Health Foundation, like our partners at the Kansas Leadership Center, we believe everyone can exercise leadership regardless of title. However, in the book and throughout the podcast, we call on Kansans in positions of authority who hold power and influence and can shape systems and shift policy. 

Our Conversation Catalysts are members of those Kansans in key authority roles who will share practical reflections on how Health as a leadership challenge shows up in our communities, governments, workplaces and more.

Meet our Conversation Catalysts

A Call to Action

While you’re reading the book and listening to the podcast, you might be asking yourself: “Am I a part of the 30,000?”

Are you a parent in a school district? Are you a member of a book club? Are you a volunteer at a local nonprofit? Every person has a sphere of influence, and exercising leadership on Health will take the work of every Kansan. 

That’s why the book is titled How You and 30,000 Kansans Can Help Communities Thrive.

What does exercising leadership on this challenge look like for you? Can you engage your elected officials? Can you attend and participate in public meetings? Can you serve on a board? Starting the conversation on the issues that matter most to you is your call to action. What is your role in this system? What is one step you can take? 

Start by claiming your copy of the book

We cannot keep doing the same things and expect different results. Leading Health is a catalyst for doing things differently. To listen, reflect, identify our role and take that first step.