By Gary Gunderson

Perhaps you’ve met a human. You have probably noticed that we can be hard to help. Perhaps you’ve been to a planet like Earth and noticed the same thing, except in 7 billion different ways. How do you help something with 7 billion moving parts be healthier?

Advancing population health depends on understanding not just the medical problems, but the drivers of health… at community scale… over time. Those drivers are largely social and they are not determinants because none of the 7 billion of us humans are determined. Words guide our imagination, shape our ability to talk about what to fear and what to hope for. So it is a big deal to see the 100 Million Lives Campaign leave “determinants” for “drivers.”

It’s important for anyone in any position to influence a single life to talk about life as changeable and choosable—but shaped by power drivers that have to be confronted. This is especially true for those in positions to influence the big social structures like hospitals or faith networks. Recently in Washington, DC, the Association of Academic Health Centers met to explore how their huge organizations can align themselves with the leading edge understanding of the social drivers of health. This is a huge shift for them— or us, as I am a VP of one. They brought in the big voices including none other than Dr. Michael Marmot the author of the stunningly powerful studies of social position over time, The Health Gap. And our friend Dr. Denise Koo, one of the principle forces behind the new array of useful tools emerging from the CDC such as the Community Health Improvement Navigator.

The closing panel of the whole conference was our “ground game” in Winston-Salem. This was explained and embodied by Jeremy Moseley, Wake Forest Baptist Health’s Director of Community Engagement; and Annika Archie, the lead Supporter of Health. Dr. Teresa Cutts laid down the data beat like a bass player in a jazz ensemble. I had two minutes at the end to set a metaphor like a sail to catch the wind of the spirit moving where you wouldn’t expect it.

Heading toward life

The social drivers engage the role of a hospital not just as a provider of therapies but as a social presence—usually the very largest social/political/economic structure in a community and region. This requires us to see ourselves from a community perspective: inside out and upside down. At Methodist Healthcare in Memphis we found ourselves in a covenant relationship with more than 600 congregations that pulled us inside out. In Winston-Salem we have followed the deeply grounded intelligence found in some of our lowest wage workers into relationships that are not just inside-out, but upside down or, better, right side up. We were steering toward life, not just away from death.

Proactive mercy is way cheaper than reactive charity. That’s the whole and complete logic of “population health management.” But if you don’t understand the humans, you can’t expect to be proactive. Being proactive depends on the intelligence about– and trust with– the neighborhoods where the costs of reactivity are concentrated. This requires not just the preeminent brilliance of our surgeons, but of all 14,000 humans on the team. Wake Forest Baptist Health President and CEO Dr. John McConnell and Annika Archie embodied this new deep discovery in a recent video interview.

That’s what works.

Mainsails, not anchors!

It is new for big organizations to hold ourselves accountable for social factors. That has always been on the side, a by-product, an unintended consequence. Now it’s central. Some say we should think of ourselves as “anchor institutions,” but that image reinforces our worst habits of domination. What could be worse than focusing on anchors of determinants? I’m depressed just typing it!

We should be mainsail organizations.

The mainsail is the large sail on a clipper ship low and strong that you leave up even amid the heaviest weather and hardest storm. This includes the storm-tattered neighborhoods you can see outside the windows of the urban medical center. You leave the mainsail up because in deep and heavy water you have to keep going or the waves will overwhelm you. The last thing you need is to drop an anchor. That’s what you see in Annika, Jeremy, TC and their hundreds of colleagues setting themselves to catch the same wind of Spirit—surgeons, nurses, social workers and revenue cycle VP’s– that share a hope and mission.

You can even hear it now from some our community partners, glad that we have finally joined them in their journey toward health. They don’t want an anchor; they want to go somewhere new.

Last Saturday Wake Forest’s Rev. Dr. Francis Rivers received the major award from the Hispanic League of Winston-Salem honoring him (and the FaithHealth team) for leaning way into the heavy seas of anti-immigrant venom surging currently in North Carolina in creating the ID Drive. Francis’ award honored him, but also his mainsail organization—and not just the tiny part of it called FaithHealth. The medical center put up a big sail amid very heavy seas that helped other key institutions do their critical work. The Sheriff, the police, the DA, a network of churches called Love Out Loud, many Hispanic organizations and Que Pasa media). And don’t forget the most important FaithAction—the small faith-based organization that does the actual work of validating identity so that an ID card can be issued and trusted.

Catch the wind

A fully rigged sailing ship is a complicated thing with many sails and miles of rigging. So, too, is any network of partners committed to helping their community move away from the rocks and into a safe harbor. But none of the partners could have stepped into the heavy wind themselves, much less alone. That role was for the mainsail and a ship built for deep water.

You might be so embarrassed by all the mean hateful things religious people are doing these days that you want to stop the metaphor right there. But you’d be leaving out the most interesting part of sailing—the wind. The sail doesn’t have any power; it only catches the wind. Greek traces the same word for wind to breath and… Spirit.

We know in North Carolina that the Spirit can blow toward or away from the rocks; it depends on the skill of the sailors and the courage of those who climb up the rigging and set the sails. These are days filled with stupid religious venom, so I don’t blame anyone who wants to move culture and institutions and society without faith. But nothing at cultural scale ever happens without Spirit blowing really hard. You can stay below decks and hope for the best. Or you can find someone who knows how to set a mainsail and head to deep water. Francis, Annika and the others on the edge, live way up in the rigging where the wind blows with raw power. They teach us to its respect power but not to fear.

Dr. King spoke realistically when he said “the arc of history bends toward justice.” It is a slow bending curve, more tectonic than sharp. We don’t choose this way or that but lend our days to the slow bend, helping each other keep courage for the long turning. We set our sails for heavy seas and a long arc toward a horizon worth the journey.

Images from Creative Commons. From top: Bonhams London, Krusenstern horrid (pink mainsails), Bonhams.