When Renee S. Frazier came on board with the Healthy Memphis Common Table earlier this year, she had a lot of work on her plate. The non-profit collaborative, which was founded in 2000 had steadily grown into a multi-layered organization with specific initiatives to make Memphis healthier, receiving national grants for their work.

 

By bringing in an executive director with a corporate leadership background, the goal has been to give the Common Table a business structure.

 

In this first year as the executive director, Frazier, who is from Baltimore and a recent transplant from Pittsburg, has delved into the community and the organization. With a fresh re-branding of the organization, a new, user-friendly Web site and dedicated local campaigns, the Common Table is setting the stage for maximum impact.

 

There's been a lot of work going on. We have made some changes, have a new Web site and repositioned our brand. We changed it to have much more focused on the Healthy Memphis, but we've not lost the common table. We've created an action plan that speaks to what we ultimately want to do which is take charge for better health.

 

We created the "Take Charge for Better Health" charge card for consumers. We wanted to create something that we could make available to consumers, and the charge card is the first step to having a tool we can use in various ways. The only thing we're using it for now is to reinforce the information that is in our checklist but it has potential.

 

For example, it may have the ability to be a tool for future food discounts, a tool for putting health information on it.

 

We've also come out with a "Picture of Better Health" series on our Web site and that is information to help consumers make better decisions about their health and to help them better partner with their physician. The information is unique because it ranks information around physician groups and quality indicators. It's not available anywhere else in Memphis.

 

This is what people say about doctors in our market. Patients complete a 29-question survey and this information is compiled by Consumer Checkbook.

 

There's an issue of comfort level but we engaged physicians in the whole process and there are a couple of things they were able to influence – there was at least a certain amount of patients and the terminology we're using is lower, average and better. We did frame the position of the information so it did not come out as trying to negatively communicate information against the physicians.

 

Number one, I wanted to understand the community. For 90 days, I met with more than 185 people. The commitment for this community to have a regional health improvement collaborative is very clear.

 

Secondly I spent as much time as I could understanding the organization – what made it tick, where were our strengths, where we needed to build our capabilities.

 

The third thing was to visit where we are in terms of vision and mission, and to get a sense our long-term strategy going forward.

 

The list of America's Healthiest Cities is a list of about 350 cities and we're not even on it. I don't think it's that hard to get to the list. We have more 5Ks than I've ever seen in my life so that speaks to (the fact that) there are people in this community who have adopted a notion of a healthier lifestyle. I want to get us on that list. I believe it really can happen.

 

We're going to be more community active. I can tell you that right now. One thing you'll see in 2010 is us reaching out more into the neighborhoods and the community and engaging broader constituencies in this focus of taking charge of their health, and the broader vision to become one of America's healthiest cities.

 

We also want to grow and strengthen our board to engage more business leaders and also policymakers, possibly taking on some major policy issue around health and health improvement.

 

I've learned there is a lot going on in the world of health improvement and healthcare. There are significant initiatives going on at the community level that I don't think people realize and I'm hoping to bring out some of those activities to show what's going on in our community.

 

If we could ever figure out how to leverage the neighborhood work, we would blow people off the map in terms of what Memphis could be.

 

One of the things I'm hoping to do is to bring out some of those activities to show what's going on in our community.

 

The other thing I learned is that Memphians are very hard on themselves. We just beat ourselves up and I don't understand it. My strategy is to really focus on the side of good.

 

I think Memphis has enough activity going on that we could begin to measure better health. It's too soon to tell from the data, but I think if you were to measure activity, we're getting healthier in terms of our attempts to do the work but it's going to take some time to measure outcomes.

 

The doctors have been very important in helping us frame how we communicate usable information. They've been very helpful in understanding what information is and what it isn't.

 

The three things doctors can continue to do for the Common Table is one, stay at the CT. That's very important. Secondly is to really encourage them to engage their patients as much as possible and make sure they're receptive to what we're trying to promote. The final thing is to keep an open mind. Nobody's out to get them. We're not interested in that. We really want to engage them in a positive way.