By Jeffrey Woldt
CINCINNATI — The health care stakeholders at the inaugural Nourishing Change Conference here earlier this week are dedicated to transformation, firmly believing that improvement isn’t likely to occur unless it’s made to happen. Confronted with a system that, at least for those who can afford it, is the equal of any in world, but in the aggregate delivers substandard outcomes, attendees gathered to initiate the process of reimagining health care at the retail level. Building on the concept that you are what you eat, the organizers of the event decided they needed to tackle health care holistically.
Hosted by Kroger Co., Nourishing Health brought together more than 725 stakeholders from 37 states and 12 countries. Delegates from the retail, health care, CPG and technology sectors were present, along with academics, market researchers and policy makers, among others.
“The challenge is that the United States of America spends more money on health care than any other country in the world, yet we rank very close to the bottom when it comes to outcomes,” said Colleen Lindholz, president of Kroger Health and the driving force behind the conference. “I’m not sure about all of you, but we’re not OK with that.
“We have the ability, we have the tools, we have the money to make a difference, and that’s what we are going to do — address the root causes of what’s going on in the country with those outcomes. While the challenges are clear, so are the opportunities.”
The dominant theme during the two-and-a-half-day meeting was retailers’ ability to act as a catalyst for making health care more accessible, affordable and effective. Embedded in the heart of communities across the country, supermarkets, drug stores and other retailers that sell food, prescription medications and health care products already meet many of consumers’ most basic needs. A shift in emphasis at those companies from treatment to prevention, coupled with policy changes that allow pharmacists and dietitians to provide a wider range of services than they do today — and be compensated for them — would go a long way toward ushering in a new era in health and wellness.
Viewing retail health through the lens of a theory by Robert Brown — a 19th-century Scottish botanist — Jim Kirby, Kroger Health’s chief commercial officer, said, “We’re all aligned with this common purpose of helping people live healthier lives, but we’re doing it in our own vacuums. Now, we have these collisions that are often haphazard. And sometimes when we collide, we’re actually competing.
“What if we intentionally decide that these points of collision should be our points of collaboration? That is the essence of Nourishing Change — bringing people together from different sectors, different organizations, to create more points of collision, to create something new and to align on a unified direction and move at a pace that matters.”
A variety of prominent retailers participated in the process. For example, during two plenary sessions, Lindholz; Hy-Vee president Aaron Wiese; Sarah Mastrorocco, vice president and general manager at Instacart Health; and Troy Trygstad, executive director at CPESN, took part in a panel moderated by Haleon’s Lisa Paley on Visionary Retailers – Elevating Health Access for All.
For his part, Kirby moderated a discussion about The Future of Retail Health that featured Angie Nelson, senior vice president of pharmacy at Hy-Vee; Steven Jennings, stakeholder relations and brand lead for health and sustainability at Ahold Delhaize USA; Jackie Morse, group vice president of pharmacy and health at Meijer Inc.; and Stacy Bates, director of nutrition wellness strategy at H-E-B. Sara Roszak, senior vice president of health and wellness policy and strategy at the National Association of Chain Drug Stores, and Krystal Register, vice president of health and well-being at FMI – The Food Industry Association, also took part.
A commitment to meaningful change — driven by the realization that the status quo in health care is untenable — informed all the discussions. The insights that emerged pointed to the fact that the time to unlock the potential of retail health care is now.
“At Kroger Health, we believe that care is value-based, not volume-based,” Lindholz said. “We believe that it is interprofessional, not siloed. We believe that care should be personalized, not generalized. So one size does not fit all. And we believe that care should be equitable, not exclusive.
“These are the foundational pieces, the values that we are executing each and every day in our strategy. And from talking to many of you in this room, I believe you are in that same space of where we need to intersect. The theme of this conference — reimagining retail health — recognizes that the role is already evolving. But the question for all of you is, are we helping shape the change that the country needs or are we simply just reacting to it? We want to help shape it.”
Organizers envision Nourishing Change as a movement, not a one-time event. At the conclusion of the meeting, Lindholz passed the torch to Wiese of Hy-Vee, who will host the event next year in Des Moines. In the meantime, work groups comprised of conference attendees are being assembled to move the ball forward.
