Serving those who serve

Through Humana military's office of population health we aim to look outside of our Humana walls to determine what community organizations and military health influencers are already working on improving the health of the military community the military community is rich in partnerships from military support organizations and veteran support organizations who are there to really rally around our military families because we understand and recognize that in order for our warriors to be strong
through deployments and constant separation the family needs to be strong and in order for the family to be strong they need to be healthy we have had a population health initiative in place in Jacksonville in san Antonio for a few years now through our Humana Inc. bold goal program and i am just so excited to bring this work to life for our tri-care beneficiaries we have 250 000 tri-care beneficiaries in san Antonio and about 140 000 in Jacksonville the office of population health is going to focus on loneliness
90 of military spouses have at one time felt lonely 43 of spouses have chosen to live geographically separated from their spouses due to the career choices of their spouse
or to offer better opportunities for education for their children a lot of these young enlisted this is the first time away from their hometown they may come from Kansas or Minnesota and all of a sudden they're in a strange place and then all of a sudden you know their spouse is deployed for six eight months and it can be very lonely coming home you're coming home to family but you can still feel isolated even though you're surrounded by people you really struggle with your identity like who am i used to have this very clear purpose and mission but now I’m kind of by myself and I’m around people that really don't understand me um and i don't have somebody that's kind of responsible for me you know i see a lot of people who go to USOs just to hang out you know i would have been one of those guys but i didn't know enough about USO and what the services that they offered today if we can get the word out to our young troops and to their families particularly those who are deplored it is guaranteed that we will move again it is guaranteed that our service member will deploy again my family experienced eight deployments over the course of my husband's 22-year career and our children attended six different schools in six years so navigating all of those challenges while ensuring our warriors are ready to serve is our utmost priority the second area focus will be on food insecurity out of all the households feeding America serves twenty percent have a
military community representative that's either a veteran or an active duty member there's a lot of times especially when we have long pay periods that it's a real stretch so we start getting down to the nitty-gritty and we do have to choose between a medical bill or food and when you walk into the grocery store and realize that you can't walk out
anything it's more than am i sacrificing my child's you know extracurricular activities for this it's can i even provide for my child this week just because you're in the military doesn't mean that you don't have the same issues in terms of food insecurity that you see
out in the private sector i think that's why feeding of these
Florida partnered with the USO is we saw that they already have such a relationship with their clients. This is home to their clients; this is an extension of their family, and when you have that with an actual pantry you actually maintain dignity, you actually build trust and you can actually find other ways to empower these individuals, so when they leave the military they'll be in a better shape. As we take care of our Tricare beneficiaries, it's not just their health care concerns there's other issues that we can deal with and i think the office of population health
is going to be a great boon for Humana military in terms of doing that work. The third area that the office of population health is focusing on is tobacco and alcohol use. Military service members and their families typically have a higher propensity to use tobacco and alcohol.
In fact, service members who have deployed are 50 percent more likely to use tobacco
so there are several measures that we're going to be using to track our progress. However the north star measure that we will be using is called healthy days, also known as via saludables.
and healthy days is a self-reported tool used by the CDC that measures one's mental and physical health. Humana Inc has partnered up with the CDC, Robert Wood Johnson foundation, also Columbia university, and there is a correlation in the responses in healthy days to health claims so improving healthy days within a community will improve health care costs. I’m so
excited with about the opportunity to be able to create something and also to use data
to drive decisions, data to help tie the work that has been done. There was so much great work being done, but being able to tie that to outcomes - who wouldn't be passionate about
population health and serving our deserving? who wouldn’t be passionate about reducing illness and injury for those we serve through healthy lifestyles and making sure that our beneficiaries aware of the plethora of resources available to them not only through the department
of defense but through the military health system. healthy lifestyles are the drivers for population health being that we're Military City USA there should not be a reason why our service members feel food insecurity loneliness or have these alcohol and tobacco issues. Humana military is perfectly poised to be able to address these issues in this population and um and being that i um that my husband is a veteran i definitely see why how there can be a need and an opportunity for improvement. i am extremely excited about launching this population health initiative, specifically because of the140 000 member Tricare members in the Jacksonville community
i'm also a former military spouse so I know what challenges these military members face especially their families, and i know how to navigate the community to engage community partners to create more of a holistic wrap-around service. having that voice of our beneficiary at
the center of what we do is going to be of the utmost importance to make sure we're really meeting our beneficiaries where they are and designing programs that they not only will engage in but will be excited to engage in. At the end of the day we're just excited to make an impact on our military family readiness because we know when our military families are ready our service members can go out and accomplish their mission knowing that their families are taken
care of on the home front. so if you are a community organization who is already doing great work for our military community, please reach out to us. Our email address is on the screen and we look forward to connecting with you