Gundersen St. Joseph's Hospital and Clinics, Hillsboro, 2021 Community Benefit

Now Streaming: Community Health Podcast

Gundersen St. Joseph's Community Health Podcast
The COVID-19 pandemic changed everything, but one thing stood out more than anything; Gundersen St. Joseph’s missed their community. Before the pandemic, Gundersen 
St. Joseph’s attended local civic groups to keep the community up to date on happenings at the hospital, hosted meet and greets with providers, and ran health fairs to provide education, all to improve health literacy and be the driving force for overall community support. These needs were highlighted recently in our 2019 community health needs assessment—specifically, the need for more awareness of local resources. 
Because of the pandemic, meetings were cancelled or held virtually, and many opportunities to connect with the community began to dwindle. But the need to stay connected and share information was greater than ever before. 
To address this need, Gundersen St. Joseph’s began its own Community Health Podcast. The Gundersen St. Joseph’s (GSTJ) podcast began as a monthly, Facebook-only initiative but quickly grew and is now available on Spotify and Apple podcasts as well as many other platforms. The podcast aims to share information on health care topics in an informal way using local health care providers and staff at Gundersen St. Joseph’s. 
Previous topics have included mental health and COVID-19; navigating emergency care; nutrition; and health care costs, billing, and insurance coverage. 
The future goal of the podcast is to grow it to include local, county, and regional organizations on the show to discuss their services and explore a collaboration with the local radio station.