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No state has fallen further than Kansas in America’s Health Rankings. We used to be 8th in 1991.
Why did we slip so far down in the rankings? The answer might surprise you; it’s based on a leadership challenge.
At the Kansas Health Foundation, our bold vision is to make Kansas the healthiest state in the nation and to do so, this movement must be powered by Kansans in positions of authority and influence to shift Health outcomes.
Starting with the launch of the 2025 publication, Leading Health, written by President and CEO of the Kansas Health Foundation, Ed O’Malley, this podcast aims to break down key concepts of this leadership challenge and actionable ways that we can work together to make a real impact on Health in Kansas.
In each episode, Ed O’Malley, and Senior Advisor at Kansas Health Foundation, Susan Kang, will highlight a chapter in the book and discuss with Kansans who are actively engaged in expanding our definition of Health.
Leading Health is an invitation to move the needle on Health in Kansas, and we invite you to join us in leading the way.
Bonus01
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[00:00:00]
Ed O'Malley: Welcome to another episode of the Leading Health Podcast. It's when my colleague Susan Kang and I, my name is Ed O'Malley, walk you through this book, leading Health, how You and [00:01:00] 30,000 Kansans Help Communities Thrive. Susan, we're doing a little bit of a different kind of episode today. We've done five episodes, we've walked through kinda the first part of the book.
We're about to, in our future episodes, get into the second part of the book today. We're kind of doing a little bit of a bridge, a little bit of pause, aren't we?
Susan Kang: Yeah. Yeah.
Recap of First Five Episodes
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Susan Kang: I think that's important to have our listeners to understand where we've been. A little bit of a recap and then a little, little bit of a preview about what's to come.
Ed O'Malley: Yeah.
Recap of First Five Episodes
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Ed O'Malley: We've had five episodes. We were joined by Teresa Lovelady for one of those episodes. She is the CEO of Health Core Clinic here in Wichita. We are joined by Kari Bruffett. In another one of those episodes, she's the CEO of the Kansas Health Institute, and we were joined by Kenny Wilk in our last episode who works for the University of Kansas Health System.
Yeah. In a long time. Civic Official in Kansas, in lots of different roles and a lot of conversation in part one of the book and part [00:02:00] one of the podcast series. Those first, you know, five episodes, a lot of that conversation was really saying, Hey, like, like. What's going on with health in Kansas, right?
Capital H vs Lowercase h
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Capital H vs Lower h Health
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Ed O'Malley: So we know this by now, we, we made an argument about capital H Health versus lower H Health. And by the way, if you're listening and you didn't catch that, go back to episode one where we really dive into capital H versus lower H Health.
Meet the 30000 Civic Leaders
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Ed O'Malley: And we talked about the 30,000. You know, the, the focus of this book, the focus of this podcast, are those 30,000 Kansans who hold.
Roles of civic authority. There are elected officials, pastors, university presidents, school principals, nonprofit executives, community minded business CEOs. We, we talked like, like, why, why did we kind of like, like target those 30,000? And what's the role they need to play?
Health Rankings as North Star
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Ed O'Malley: And we got into great conversation, didn't we, about America's Health Rankings.
I know it was one of your favorite topics.
Susan Kang: [00:03:00] Yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely. I think that is one of, I mean, that's, we're using that as our North Star, right? To measure progress on our journey to becoming number one in the nation,
Ed O'Malley: you know?
Part Two Symptoms Diagnosis Prescription
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Symptoms Diagnosis Prescription Framework
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Ed O'Malley: But as we go into part two, if part one, here's a simple way of thinking about this maybe leaning a little too heavily on a medical metaphor here, but part one.
Really of, of this podcast. Part one of the book really describes the symptoms.
Susan Kang: Mm-hmm.
Ed O'Malley: Like part two is when we're, we're gonna give a diagnosis. Okay. And part three, which we'll talk about later, is where we really outline the prescription.
Susan Kang: Mm-hmm.
Ed O'Malley: Okay. So how's that? I'm not a doctor, but how's that for a
Susan Kang: medical
Ed O'Malley: model?
Right.
Susan Kang: I know, exactly. Pretty clever, huh? Exactly. Thank you. Yep.
Ed O'Malley: Thank you.
Susan Kang: Absolutely.
Ed O'Malley: Right. So, so with part two.
Passionate People as Their Own Enemy
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Passionate People and Hidden Challenges
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Ed O'Malley: We start part two by in essence saying passionate people, not in essence, literally saying passionate people working for change are [00:04:00] often their own biggest enemy. And we go on to describe in this little, kind of in-between chapter five and chapter six, we have this little kind of introduction to part two and, and we describe some examples of Kansans members of the 30,000 working for like their thing.
So the first example is about a advocate for the homeless, and the second example is about a speaker of the house. And the third example is about a business executive, like, like working to do their thing at improving Kansas. But then we, we talk about how, like in these examples. The real challenge was different than it first seemed, and this is always true, right?
Like those of us, all of us listening, Susan, you and me, we've all had times where we end up working on something and what we thought was gonna be the key to progress wasn't the key to progress. Mm-hmm.
Susan Kang: It was something else. Right.
Ed O'Malley: And that's certainly alive and well as we try to mobilize Kansans [00:05:00] to close the health gap and.
And the, and what we're really saying is we tend to think that the health gap, closing the health gap, we tend to think that climbing the health rankings, getting to number one. We tend to think that the slide in health from our high watermark of number eight to our low watermark of number 31, we tend to think of all that as a health, health stuff.
Susan Kang: Mm-hmm.
Ed O'Malley: That it's a health challenge.
Susan Kang: Yeah. I mean, I totally thought that until the book, right? Yeah,
Ed O'Malley: yeah. The, yeah.
Not a Health Problem a Leadership One
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Not a Health Problem a Leadership Problem
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Ed O'Malley: If there's a moment of suspense in the book, which it's not a thriller, but it's really the moment of surprise or suspense is part two where we in essence say this is not a health challenge, it is a leadership challenge.
That's what this is. And if we think of it as a health challenge, we'll try to solve it in one way.
Susan Kang: Yeah.
Ed O'Malley: If we think of it as a leadership challenge and [00:06:00] specifically a leadership challenge for the 30,000. You know, most of which are not doctors or nurses or hospital executives or public health experts, right?
If we think of it as a leadership challenge for the 30,000, we'll go in a different direction. We know based on our work at the Kansas Health Foundation. Improving capital H Health is a leadership challenge. Climbing America's health rankings for our state and getting to number one is a leadership challenge, and it's a challenge specifically for the 30,000.
That's what we talk about in part two.
Adaptive Challenge and Hidden Leadership Book
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Adaptive Challenge and Rare Leadership
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Susan Kang: Right, and add to that, that it's an adaptive challenge. This is not a technical challenge, and there are many things that go with that notion, right? The fact that it's an adaptive challenge, that it involves risk, it involves loss, it involves further exploration.
There's no easy answer.
Ed O'Malley: Yeah. You know, somebody, I, I talked to somebody the other day who had read the book and they they said, ed, I, I, I see what you did there. That was really [00:07:00] clever. You, you wrote a health book, but you snuck in a leadership book inside it. Yeah. And that's absolutely true. I mean, by design, that's what we did.
And so part two is when we are, is where we are parsing out why is this a leadership challenge? And we are. We're sharing a lot of information about the nature of adaptive challenges, which proving capital H Health is an adaptive challenge. We're sharing a lot of information about the nature of those adaptive challenges and connecting those characteristics of adaptive challenges to this challeng of the health gap in Kansas.
I think people are gonna enjoy the, the, the. The section part two. There are, I can't remember how many chapters, maybe five or six chapters in this part of the book. I think there's a lot of provocative ideas.
Provocative Take on Leadership
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Ed O'Malley: I think there are some topics that are gonna piss people off a little bit. You know, the way we talk about leadership, for example, we don't think leadership happens very often.
We think it's incredibly rare. Mm-hmm. We think most of us don't do it. And there are a whole lot [00:08:00] of people in the 30,000 who. Get called a quote unquote leader, and they think of themself as a quote unquote leader, and they might be challenged by the way we're saying, look, we actually don't like the L word.
We like to talk about people exercising leadership.
Susan Kang: Right?
Ed O'Malley: It's an activity, it's not a position. So it's a provocative part of the book. I'm excited to get into it with our podcast guests over the next several episodes. It'll be a lot of fun.
Susan Kang: Yeah.
Susan on New Lens and Experiments
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Why This Lens Changes Everything
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Susan Kang: What I would say about this book for me and how it lands and, and frankly, what we do at Kansas Health Foundation is a different way of doing so.
In other words. You know, we look at health, people have looked at health as a health issue and how, how to solve. Maybe using some quick fixes as to how to get up in our rankings if people are even thinking about that. But you know how to do quick fixes, but. I think what's really, really resonant for me is that we are looking at this from a different lens and part of [00:09:00] framing this as a leadership issue as opposed to a health issue really does so much for me to think differently, right.
And to try different experiments and try to look at this issue differently in an effort to. To come to a different conclusion, not the same old conclusion that, that we keep coming to around health, which is basically getting nowhere. So that is what I'm really interested in diving into.
Ed O'Malley: Yeah.
Susan Kang: Around this book.
Why Experts Alone Cannot Close the Gap
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Experts Matter but Leadership Leads
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Ed O'Malley: You know, Susan, for 35 years. I would one, one interpretation would be for 35 years, we, people in Kansas who knew about the slide in the health rankings knew that Kansas was one of the healthiest states, number eight at one point, and fell as low as number 31. That was four years ago Now, that for 35 years during that slide, which is a persistent slide mm-hmm.
Right, that we, we believed that this was something to leave to the medical experts and the public health professionals. Now. Now those people have a [00:10:00] part to play. And their part is very important. And the Kansas Health Foundation, and Susan, you and and myself, we are huge fans of medical experts and public health professionals, but their part is just a part.
And even if all we close a little, little introduction to part two with this paragraph. Even if all the experts on healthcare, public health, nutrition, fitness, and wonder drugs do their part. The health gap will remain. That's because the health gap is first and foremost a leadership challenge for the 30,000.
It's gonna be fun getting in this with our, with our guests. Uh, With you, Susan, we'll have a lot of great conversations. It'll be a good time.
Susan Kang: We're gonna have a lot of fun.
Wrap Up and Next Episode Tease
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Wrap Up and Next Episode Tease
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Ed O'Malley: Alright everybody, thanks for joining us for this little mini episode of the Leading Health Podcast. Hope you join us next time when we dive into describing how this is a leadership challenge, not a health [00:11:00] challenge in more detail.
Thanks everyone. Take care.