Boone Health Community Wellness

By Jenny L. Workman, Community Wellness Manager

Boone Health Community Wellness is our outreach program which supports health and wellness programs and screenings for mid-Missouri companies, communities in our service area, and Boone Health employees.

In the 2000s, Boone Hospital Center established a community outreach program called WELLAWARE that provided community health screenings, health fairs, and wellness challenges for staff, and corporate and community partners. The COVID-19 pandemic had put a stop to our community outreach as we focused our efforts on prevention and vaccination, but it also gave us the opportunity, particularly during our transition to an independent health care organization, to revisit our purpose and programs and start with a new name and mission as Community Wellness.

Community Wellness provides programs similar to WELLAWARE, but with a new emphasis on promoting overall well-being and wellness. We help people find overall wellness by promoting 8 dimension of wellness: physical, intellectual, emotional, social, spiritual, vocational, financial, and environmental.

We’ve also adjusted our goal to provide education and resources to fit the needs of our population. For example, we encourage people to find a medical home with a primary care provider. A medical home is associated with improved health outcomes including fewer emergency room visits, hospitalizations, and delaying or going without care. Having a medical home leads to more preventative care, including yearly wellness exams and other recommended preventive care.

Community Wellness continues to work with our corporate partners in midMissouri to provide wellness screenings, programs and initiatives tailored to their employees’ specific needs.

Wellness programs benefit employees, their organizations, and communities. Wellness programs can reduce absenteeism in the workplace because employees who work at companies invested in their well-being are less likely to get sick, overwhelmed, or feel unappreciated. They are also better equipped to handle stress at work and are less likely to call in sick.

A strong wellness program also helps employees feel cared about and seen. If people know their employer is invested in helping them achieve personal and health goals, they are more likely to be personally invested in helping their organization be successful.

Our Community Wellness team includes program manager Jenny L. Workman; program coordinator Lisa Todd; Mobile Health Unit driver Charles Kitchen; and a team of part-time nurses: nurse coordinator Brenda Wilson; Lucy Shaffer, Elaine Samuel, Sharilyn Reedy, Cheryl Currie and Phyliss Golden. We also collaborate with registered nurses, exercise physiologists, and clinicians from various Boone Health departments for community and corporate screenings, flu vaccines, and wellness programs and education.

Partnerships with various community organizations, including health departments, allows us to provide resources and education to community members. The Mobile Health Unit, funded by Boone Hospital Foundation, helps Community Wellness bring our wide array of wellness services to communities throughout our 26-county service area.

For more information on Community Wellness, including upcoming screenings and corporate programs, please visit www.boone.health/community-wellness.