Health Calls

A Collaborative Model for Community-Based Wellness

Episode Summary

Health Calls Season 6, Episode 10 highlights Healthspan Nevada County, an innovative community‑based wellness model redefining whole‑person care. Host Brian Reardon and Executive Producer Josh Matejka talk with Dr. Scott Neeley, president and CEO of Dignity Health’s Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital, about how this collaborative approach strengthens community health beyond traditional clinical care.

Episode Notes

Rooted in four pillars—movement, food, connection, and youth development—the Healthspan model brings together nonprofits, arts organizations, schools, and health leaders to prevent chronic disease and promote long‑term wellness. Dr. Neeley explains why community connection, healthy environments, and shared purpose play a critical role in improving health outcomes.

Episode Transcription

Brian Reardon (00:05):

Welcome to Health Calls, the podcast of the Catholic Health Association of the United States. I'm your host, Brian Reardon. With me is Josh Matejka. Hey Josh.

Josh Matejka (00:13):

Hey Brian.

Brian Reardon (00:15):

So this episode we're going to be talking about a collaborative model for community-based wellness. And Josh, throughout this season we've been talking about United For Change, different collaborative efforts, partnerships among our members. And this actually, this episode came about because of an article that appeared in the current Issue of Health Progress, the winner issue 2026 issue. It was entitled Health Span Re-Imagining Whole Person Wellness as a Community Goal. And I think when we read that article, I know at least for me, it really brought up the idea of true collaboration within a community. So can you set a little context for this conversation about that article and about what we're going to talk to our guests who will be joining us in just a moment. Dr. Scott Neeley, he's president and CEO of Dignity Health, Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital. We're going to bring him in just a moment,

Josh Matejka (01:05):

And I hope Dr. Neeley isn't too uncomfortable because I'm going to read a little bit, just a small portion of his article. I remember when I was first reading it and doing some research, where I really started to get interested was when he started talking about the concept of Body Mind as one word. And maybe it's because I read a little too much Orwell as a teenager and that stood out to me. But I started reading through this article in terms of how he talked about, he talked about this biomedical model that was a little bit not outdated, but it's not adequate. I believe were the words that Dr. Neeley used in his article for how we see wellness and how we see health in a community. And really, I remember I tagged this line from the article and I'm going to go ahead and read it and for our listeners, we'll have the article linked in the show notes as well.

(01:55)
These findings remind us that health is not produced in isolation, but in community, the relationships that sustain us, families, friendships, neighborhoods and peer groups constitute a form of public health infrastructure every bit as essential as hospitals and clinics. I mean, I think those words right there are justification enough for the United for Change theme and how this fits in. But I just think that this concept that this article builds out and that Dr. Neeley is working with is so unique in how it reimagines community and partnership and collaboration and creativity as a mode of pursuing wellness and health inside of a community, outside of just you get sick, you go to a doctor or a hospital. So I'm really excited for him to talk to our listeners and tell them about what's going on in the work that he and his colleagues are doing.

Brian Reardon (02:43):

Yeah, Josh, and if we've talked about Whole Person Care and different episodes on this show, really it's all about the power of relationships and connection. And so I think we're going to get into a little bit of this conversation. Again, we're going to bring in Dr. Scott Neeley. He serves as president, CEO of Dignity Health, Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital. Dr. Neeley, welcome to the show.

Scott Neeley (03:04):

Oh, thanks Brian. Great to be here. And hi Josh.

Brian Reardon (03:09):

Yeah, and thanks again for authoring the HP article. And I guess to start off, for maybe our listeners who haven't had a chance to read the article, it might be helpful if you could give some background on how healthspan Nevada County, and that's again in California got started, and what are some of the overall goals of the program?

Scott Neeley (03:29):

Healthspan Nevada County grew out of some conversations that we began to have in our community. Really at this point, going back a couple of years, the people who live in Nevada County are concerned about health, they're concerned about health care just like people are throughout this country. And they have a lot of questions about what appears to them to be a lot of dysfunction in our current health care system. And as we had those conversations, I began to point out that our medical care delivery system as opposed to how it is sometimes represented in the media, is far from being broken. In fact, it works as designed. We have a health care delivery system that it designed to take care of people who are ill, that is designed to help people manage chronic illness and obviously also is designed to help people with injuries and help with things like maternity care. But our system really has never had a design or a purpose of helping people to pursue health to stay healthy in the first place. We are really good at sick care. We're really, really good at taking care of people with severe illness, with injuries, fantastic when people are in the system at taking care of maternity care. But it really has never been a strength of the medical delivery system to help people be healthy. And a lot of that is because health arises from far more than the medical care that we get.

Brian Reardon (05:39):

It's like 80%, right? If you look at statistics like only 20% of a person's health is really fact or influenced by maybe the clinical aspects of it. The 80% is really about the environment they live, the relationships they have, right?

Scott Neeley (05:53):

It's about our genes, it's about our choices. It's about what's oftentimes called social determinants of health. And it's a lot about the cultural milieu that we live in. For example, an area that is just beginning to be understood, for example is the very important role that stress and trauma, what we might sometimes call chronic toxic stress play in people developing chronic illness. The more we look, the more we find that chronic illnesses oftentimes preceded by and perhaps even strongly influenced by either very stressful events or traumas that people experience in youth or even in adulthood. And so there is simply put so much more that goes into actually being healthy than the medical care that we get. And this platform that we are building in Nevada County is an attempt to help people sort of gain that understanding, gain that insight, and as a community of people, as a culture to pursue health again, through building those connections, through building the resources that support healthy living and through community, because we have a starting belief that community can be an incredibly powerful tool in supporting people to live healthy lives.

Brian Reardon (07:46):

And as we look at the model, and again, there's a table or a graphic in the health progress article that really shows the four focus areas. And I'm interested how the collaborative came up with these four focus areas, which are movement, connection, food. And the fourth one is youth and learning. How are those identified and can you talk a little bit more about why they're important

Scott Neeley (08:13):

To begin with? When you look at the science, there are very, very few, if any, factors more important to healthy living than number one. What we ingest. Number two, whether we are active with our bodies, whether we engage in healthy movement and the type of social connections and purpose that we live with. That connection one is incredibly broad and we could obviously go into more detail on that. But those three areas are very, very solidly supported in the literature in terms of their importance in people's individual health. The third area, youth and education, we chose for a couple of reasons. Number one, getting to people early is a tremendous opportunity. The earlier that you start with following the principles of living a healthy, purposeful life, the more benefit, more the more bang for the buck. Additionally, some of those things that we talked about a little bit earlier, for example, trauma and chronic stress oftentimes begin in childhood and with youth experiences. And we think this is a great place to begin talking about that aspect of developing a healthy mind body. And so we think that our youth are our future and that there is a tremendous opportunity to give young people this sort of basis, this understanding that health is not simply a medical thing, but really arises from the lives we live and particularly from the lives that we live in, community with others.

Brian Reardon (10:23):

And I think living in community with others really is why I wanted to particularly highlight the connection piece because I think we all know those of us who work in the health care profession, that again, what you eat, how much you move, that's going to have a direct impact on how well your body functions essentially. But the other piece that often I think gets overlooked sort of in the purely clinical viewpoint of, again, health as a body is the issues of things like isolation, loneliness, and there's more and more research coming out about connection. So I guess my question is, as you put this group together, you've got all these different partners, does the idea of the focus on connection actually maybe broaden the tent a little bit, where you might have folks that wouldn't think that they've got a role in the health of community maybe coming on board because they do have a role in connecting people to each other.

Scott Neeley (11:17):

When you talk to, for example, some of the folks engaged in nonprofits in our community, there already is a true understanding of this within those groups. For example, if you talk with people in the arts community, they intuitively as well as oftentimes in the knowledge-based way, understand this concept, understand how important these type of interactions can be for people's both mental and spiritual as well as physical development. So this is a way to broaden the conversation and it's also a way to bring in community elements who might not have been sort of mainstream in terms of the conversation about health, but very much connect with these concepts that we are promoting.

Brian Reardon (12:21):

And can you give us some examples of some groups that maybe you were surprised joined this collaborative?

Scott Neeley (12:29):

I don't know if surprised that they wanted to join the collaborative, but I would say very, very heartened by the response. Again, we really have some really robust involvement with the arts in Nevada County dance, theater, music. And these groups have enthusiastically embraced this. We have some great organizations involved and putting healthy food in front of people in our community. Sierra Harvest comes immediately to mind an organization that has just done fabulous work in terms of getting scratch cooking food that's not packaged in cellophane but actually cooked in front of young people, school lunches and so forth.

Brian Reardon (13:32):

And from sort of a day-to-day practical perspective, how do these groups interact? Do they have convenings once a month? How do they get together to sort of share best practices or figure out how they might work more closely together in enhancing one program or maybe coming up with a new approach to providing services to the community that make them more healthy?

Scott Neeley (13:55):

Well, I think the nonprofits in Nevada County have had a fairly connected culture for a long time. I actually am hopeful and see signs that healthspan may be a platform for perhaps more organized collaboration amongst some of these groups. We have had a couple of convenings so far to really talk conceptually and to sort of assess interest in being more active participants. We had several of the nonprofits actively involved in brainstorming and creating our white paper. And going forward, I expect that this will be a platform where we really do have sort of regular check-ins. And as we have begun to develop the governance structure, we're looking at how to fairly broadly involve the nonprofits who are interested in sort of key areas to participate with us.

Brian Reardon (15:12):

And as this program is rolled out, how is the larger community, not just those that maybe are involved in a particular group or not-for-profit or attend of an art class or whatever, how do you get the community really more involved? And again, what we talked about earlier, this notion that a hospital is not really necessarily responsible for your overall wellness, it takes more than that. Again, like you said, a hospital, a health system of a physician practice can come in when there's a condition that needs treatment, but it's really all of our responsibility to be healthy and it really does take that connection with others in the community. So I guess the question is how has this been received in the broader community?

Scott Neeley (15:59):

I would say to the extent that the broader community is beginning to hear about and get a feel for what we're proposing, it's been an incredibly positive reception. But we've got a long ways to go because at this point in time, the folks who are dancing are those who already have a deep appreciation for the concepts that we're talking about. And where we need to go in the future is a much broader understanding of these principles and really getting to the folks where there is the greatest opportunity for change, the greatest opportunity to make a difference. And hopefully in the end, the greatest opportunity to bend the curve in terms of this epidemic of chronic illness that we are seeing kind of dominate the health care landscape.

Brian Reardon (17:03):

And my last question before I bring Josh in and we wrap things up is for those listening, and again, our audience is primarily those who are working in Catholic health care, how replicable is this model that you've created in Northern California for other parts of the country?

Scott Neeley (17:18):

I believe that this is an approach that can be broadly embraced across the country. I am sure that the solutions are going to look different in different communities. One of the reasons that I was so interested in doing this in Nevada County is that I do see it as very fertile ground. It's a relatively small, we're talking about approximately a hundred thousand people and there already is a pretty strong appreciation for things like outdoor life and activity and high quality food and culture and community. So I think it is fertile ground, and I'm sure this would be a much different lift in an urban environment, but the fundamentals that we are talking about are very sound and broad adoption is something that I think is a much bigger lift. And that's why we are seeing, for example, the epidemic of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiac disease, high cancer rates.

(18:45)
We are overwhelmed to some extent with the highest incidence of chronic disease really in the industrialized world right here in the United States. The reason for that is that these social, cultural, physical environmental influences on our health are ubiquitous and change is hard. And so I think it goes along with the old adage, simple, not easy. These are straightforward concepts, but getting people to put down their ultra processed food and take a walk on a regular basis is not necessarily going to be an easy lift, but it is a path forward that I think is critically important.

Brian Reardon (19:41):

Yeah, great reminder, Josh, you've been listening to the conversation as we wrap up. Any thoughts or final questions?

Josh Matejka (19:48):

Yeah, thanks Brian. Dr. Neeley, I thought about this when I first read the article and when we've talked a few times, and this keeps rattling around in my head as we have this conversation, but I'm reminded of the old proverb that I believe says, society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit in. And I think about that because this is very much that type of endeavor, right? It's a law. It looks toward the future. It looks at this long length of time in which people's health will get better as you develop stronger community partnerships and relationships don't just happen immediately, right? They take time, they take trust. Organizations learn how to work together, and they come and they go and new people get involved. And as you work with people in a society and a culture that is so dominated by immediate return on investment and things like that, do you find any difficulty in getting people engaged with it? Or do you find that people are excited about the prospect of something new and exciting that will have ramifications positively for maybe the future of their lives, but definitely the future that's going to future generations that will come after them?

Scott Neeley (21:06):

I really like to think of myself as that old guy planting a tree. So thank you for giving me that analogy. I love it. And I think this is absolutely a long-term play and it's a critical investment. It's a small step in what I think will be perhaps an arduous journey if we actually succeed in turning our society and our culture away from some of the harmful habits and practices that we've adopted. And it's well worth it, isn't it?

Brian Reardon (21:58):

Indeed. Again, that was Dr. Scott Neeley. He serves as president and CEO of Dignity Health, Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital. Dr. Neeley, thanks for being with us and sharing your insights and the good work you're doing there in Northern California.

Scott Neeley (22:12):

Thank you so much for having me today. It was great talking with you guys.

Brian Reardon (22:17):

And this has been another episode of Health Calls, the podcast of the Catholic Health Association in the United States. I'm your host, Brian Reardon. Our executive producer is Josh Matejka. Our production assistant is Sarah Marchant. Health Calls is engineered at Once Studios in St. Louis. You can listen to health calls on all of your favorite podcast streaming services, as well as at our website, ch a usa.org. And as Josh mentioned the article that we talked about in Health Progress, there'll be a link to that in the show notes for this particular episode. And as always, if you are downloading listening to health calls, please give us a rating. Subscribe to the podcast and of course any feedback you can share is always appreciated. Thanks for listening.