Northwest Arkansas Health Summit sees challenges made to take opportunities for positive change

FAYETTEVILLE — Health care professionals attending Thursday’s Northwest Arkansas Health Summit were challenged to take advantage of opportunities to change their communities for the better.

The Rural Health Transformation Program is a means of providing those opportunities, they were told.

Arkansas received approximately $208.8 million in late December as its first installment from the Rural Health Transformation Program. The program was established by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed by President Donald Trump in July for the federal fiscal year that began Oct. 1. The state’s portion of funding is slightly higher than the initial $200 million it requested in October.

All 50 states received $100 million as a fixed funding amount, plus a varying level of additional assistance based on an internal formula involving factors such as rural population, proportion of health facilities in rural areas and situations of certain hospitals, according to the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Rural Health Transformation Program payouts are scheduled to be distributed over a five-year period, with relative state-level amounts possibly shifting year-to-year.

Janet Mann, secretary for the Arkansas Department of Human Services and Arkansas Medicaid Director, said when considering what the program should fund, state leaders are going to need health care workers to come to them with their visions of what things look like in their region. The state is looking for new ideas and ambitions to build on what it already has and how to make it new in order to get better results, she said during a panel discussion about the program Thursday.

Jim Hudson, secretary of the Arkansas Department of Finance, said the program is not about creating a system. It’s about figuring out how the state can be enablers of lots of systems out there that are working, he said.

Further, it’s about collaboration that needs to occur across multiple counties and multiple parts of the state in order to tackle some of the problems the health care system is dealing with, he added.

Hudson’s goal is to have all the money obligated so none of it is wasted, he said. He added he wants to make wise choices about what the state allocates the money toward, saying the focus of the program is the individual.

“It’s not about, ‘How do we allocate these funds to institutions?’ It’s about how do we allocate funds to impact the health of every individual Arkansan,” Hudson said.

Mann said this program gives health care workers the opportunity to consider what they want the next five to 10 years to look like in their communities.

Arkansas Health Secretary Renee Mallory said there needs to be a cultural change in understanding what health is. She said many people have a reactive approach to health and lack understanding of how much that affects Arkansas’ overall health. Something that could positively impact rural health and health in general is reestablishing health education in schools about what a healthy lifestyle is, she said.

Hudson said his concern is not about the money for the program. Rather, he is concerned there aren’t currently enough applications submitted for initiatives and ideas that are viable and worth funding.

FOOD AS MEDICINE

A breakout session Thursday focused on the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Institute for Community Health Innovation Food is Medicine program.

Eliza Short is a research scientist at the Center for Nutrition and Health Impact and a research collaborator with the institute. She gave a presentation on the medically tailored grocery intervention done by the institute.

With the knowledge that one in five households experience food insecurity in Arkansas, the institute did a 12-week program delivering food boxes with groceries and recipes to a focus group of people with diabetes. The primary goals were to track hemoglobin A1c levels — average blood sugar in two to three months — and dietary intake.

Short said the study saw meaningful change in diabetes management based on A1c levels.

Lisa Stafford is the senior vice president of research and outreach for the Center for Research, Education and Outreach at Community Clinic.

She presented her work with the Community Clinic’s food systems program, which serves patients with chronic conditions, wellness support, home-bound needs and access barriers through multiple models. These models include community support agriculture, home delivery, skills-building and education.

Stafford said there have been consistent statistical improvements since launching these programs in 2021. According to her presentation, participation in these programs has grown from 125 to 486 participants.

COMMUNITY HEALTH

In the “developing a strengthened community health workforce” panel, Upskill NWA Executive Director Carol Silva Moralez gave a presentation on Upskill during a panel focused on “developing a strengthened community health workforce.”

Upskill is a program that connects participants to career opportunities in the health care field and takes care of things like tuition, books, fees, licensing exam costs and other historical barriers, according to the group’s website.

Moralez said the program has served 420 nontraditional students in Northwest Arkansas with 157 graduates and an 81% retention rate. This opportunity has increased graduate’s individual incomes by $37,000 a year, making it a 122% increase, she said.

Moralez said because of the collaborative ecosystem of the program, it’s become a proven model for health care and workforce success. Each participant, once graduated, commits to staying in Arkansas with their employer for two years, she said.