April 1, 2026 Forum

Bill G

I’m glad you brought up burnout because certainly one of the biggest problems that we faced was the burnout among support people. The burned out individuals often would not respond to crises.

Mark

Right. Even at the county level, we had a saying: no good deed goes unpunished. And it would be like there’s a small group of people who were committed. They held the ship afloat, but were all susceptible to burnout. We need a good support system for those people who are carrying the flag.

Mitch

I like the notion of assets. My county is compared with other “worse” counties on the basis of its assets. I can’t think of a better way to demotivate people than to have that negative assignment to them. But to look at assets, I think is key. I just love this idea of the retired people coming back to a community that’s a cold spot and helping build and change things, but also mentoring while they’re doing that. Bringing people along. Well, this is a skill. This is how you use a hammer. This is what a nail looks like. This is how you do it. And just to make it a broader thing with more involvement. And I think that is very meaningful. I think that’d be very meaningful of people doing it and even more meaningful to the community. I think that would be great.

I can’t help but think that we’re using this term health care and I’m kind of disillusioned. I don’t think it’s health care. I think it’s sick care. And I really think that in my position as a hospitalist now and having been in the industry for 40 years, I don’t see us getting people healthy. I see us getting people out of the hospital who are sick and still sick. And so I don’t even see a hospital as an asset. Otherwise, you save lives and you haven’t changed anything. You send it back out.

So I think our mental models are so important. If that’s the case, if we’re not dealing with that fundamentally, it’s going to be hard to change how we intervene in communities. What is health? Well, health is certainly not taking care of sick people. Health is something more general, more intangible that we’re not really dealing with. I just leave it at that.

Gay

I want to offer a comment that is in line with what Mitch was just talking about. Actually, everybody has said things that resonate for me, having worked in community-based mental health and how challenging it is to shift a community’s mental model. And we all still have the focus on the individual, but we need to focus on the community. The big question now is how do we do that? I mean, all of us are putting forth an effort through our publications. How else can we do it? I don’t know.

Jeremy

We have mentioned burnout. Let’s face it, I think Jack was bringing up the fact that even well-resourced places like health systems are full of people who are not feeling healthy right now.

So, the burnout rates are unbelievably high in healthcare and yet there’s tons of resources in healthcare. So, it does seem as though there’s a community need. And what we try to teach our residents here is that wellness is a manifestation of community. And I think health is also a manifestation of community.