Possible source of future support and funding?

Friday, May 2, 2008
Cost-conscious CEOs may boost kids’ health efforts
Business First of Columbus – by Carrie Ghose Business First

Premature babies and obese grade-schoolers are suddenly of more interest in Central Ohio boardrooms, as more employers realize children are both today’s covered dependents and tomorrow’s work force.

A coalition of Franklin County hospitals and health organizations led by Nationwide Children’s Hospital and supported by the Ohio Business Roundtable and others released a report May 1 compiling data on 10 indicators of child health they say are tied to future economic success. The report indicates the county lags the state and nation on half the measures, including infant deaths, obesity and teen pregnancies.

The rallying cry, loudest on the issue of obesity, could gain traction this time because businesses struggling with soaring health-insurance costs are reaching more into their employees’ personal lives. The 80 CEOs who make up the Ohio Business Roundtable this year directed the organization to study health-care reform.

“The (premium) growth year to year is getting difficult for employers,” Rob Edmund, the group’s director of policy and external relations, told Columbus Business First. “It very much has their serious attention in ways that I don’t think were quite as true in prior reform efforts.”

Children’s Hospital CEO Steve Allen said improving health and safety would make Central Ohio more attractive when recruiting businesses and employees.

Preventative care
The coalition’s report focused on children’s health problems that seem intractable but are preventable or at least manageable with early intervention, such as smoking, infant mortality and asthma.

It devotes the most time to obesity, which is almost three times as prevalent in children today than in the 1970s and is blamed for about 27 percent of the overall increase in medical spending between 1987 and 2002.

“It drives so much of health-care costs because it’s also a precursor to so many diseases,” said Joe San Filippo, chief health-care strategist for Nationwide Better Health, a health-management subsidiary of Columbus-based Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co.

“Children are beginning to develop diabetes before they’re in their teens,” he said. “When they’re obese, they have poorer grades, they have absenteeism, they have more social problems.”

The report cites an upcoming Business Roundtable study, produced with consultants McKinsey & Co., that said Ohio could save about $1.5 billion over the next decade by reducing obesity in adults and children to rates seen in the best dozen states.

The Ohio Department of Health runs 17 programs for childhood obesity, but public and private programs are not well coordinated, Director Alvin Jackson said in the coalition’s report. United Way of Central Ohio is joining the Columbus Foundation and several medical foundations to pool grants in a Community Health Funders’ Collaborative, the report said, and the first target will be obesity.

Similarly, the Columbus Partnership is assembling a plan to tackle all 18 areas of health reform identified by the Roundtable and McKinsey, starting with obesity, said Robert Milbourne, president of the organization of area chief executives.

“When you see what potential savings in health care are possible when you do something about these major factors, including obesity, it really does make sense to a group of large employers,” he said. “Some would argue it’s more important to tackle the child obesity problem.”

Focus on the family
As employers adopt more sophisticated wellness programs for employees, Allen hopes they expand the scope to include youngsters – and to get aggressive on the problem while still respecting privacy.

“Employers have taken a pretty hard stance on smoking, for example,” Allen said. “I could see not sanctions but certainly incentives for people to pursue healthy lifestyles.”

William Hayes, president of the Health Policy Institute of Ohio, said it’s good to highlight children’s issues, but what’s needed is an integrated approach that looks at the family.

If the children are obese, the parents likely are as well.

“With so many of these things it’s a family approach,” Allen agreed. “We as a community also need to make sure we’re doing those things to provide the support and resources so those families know they can be effective in mitigating some of these risks.”

Not only do parents of sick children miss work, Hayes said, they might not give their work their full attention if they’re on the phone coordinating care.

“The ability of your workers who are parents to be as effective as they can be,” he said, “is improved if their children are healthier.”

614-220-5458 | cghose@bizjournals.com

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