Leading Health | Building a Healthier Kansas

Encouraging collaboration is fine. To close the Health Gap, you need to shift from “encouraging” to using your leadership and authority to “create” collaboration. In this episode, we dive into the approaches to creating collaboration — anchoring it in a specific goal, requiring it rather than merely encouraging it and sharing power with those who have lived experience of the challenge.  Returning...

What if the systems we built to move people forward are actually the ones holding communities back?  This episode takes on one of the most important and most avoided conversations in public health: the relationship between race, racism and health outcomes. Joined by conversation catalyst, Kari Bruffett, President and CEO of the Kansas Health Institute, we explore the roots of health disparities an...

What if the way we’ve been trying to help individuals who need it is actually holding us back from solving complex Health challenges?  Most of us have given to a food pantry, volunteered at a coat drive, or helped a neighbor in need. While those acts matter, to truly move the needle on Health in Kansas, individual acts of kindness aren’t enough. The 30,000 Kansans in positions of authority — elect...

Are you putting band-aids on a wound that needs surgery? Kansas ranks seventh in the nation for volunteerism, and yet our state has fallen further than any other in the national health rankings. What if all that good-hearted, charitable energy could be redirected — not away from helping people in need, but one step further upstream, toward preventing the need in the first place? This episode explo...

In this bonus episode, we’re transitioning from Part Two in the book Leading Health and setting up Part Three, which introduces nine mindsets that the 30,000 need to hold if Kansas is going to lead the nation in health.  In Part One, we describe the symptoms of Kansas, ranked #29 at the time of writing this book. In Part Two, listeners learn that the diagnosis isn’t a health challenge, but a leade...

What if the biggest obstacle to improving health in Kansas isn't a lack of resources, knowledge, or will — but a fundamental misunderstanding of what leadership actually is? In this episode of the Leading Health Podcast, we unpack one of the most provocative ideas in the book: having authority and exercising leadership are not the same thing. Fancy titles don't automatically mobilize people. And i...

Leadership isn't all kumbaya. The truth is, real leadership, the kind that moves the needle on something as daunting as closing the health gap, is risky. It requires disrupting the status quo, disappointing your own people, and absorbing the discomfort that comes with change. But as this episode makes clear, the cost of avoiding that risk is even higher. In this episode, hosts Ed O'Malley and Susa...

It’s no secret that to solve the Health Gap in Kansas, we need those in authority to stop thinking of this as a health challenge and start thinking of it as a leadership challenge that requires a lot of change. We know that what people often fear most about change is losing something that matters to them. Understanding that distinction is the key that unlocks real progress.  In this chapter of Lea...

What if the biggest barrier to better health in your community isn't a lack of resources, but a set of assumptions you didn't even know you were making? In this conversation, co-hosts Ed O'Malley and Susan Kang are joined by returning guest Kenny Wilk of the University of Kansas Health System. Together, they unpack how hidden assumptions — about who should be involved, what needs to be done, and h...

What if the biggest barrier to improving the health of an entire state isn't a lack of medicine, money, or expertise, but a failure of leadership? In Chapter 7 of Leading Health, we tackle one of the most provocative ideas in the book: Kansas can't climb the health rankings without first confronting the reality that we don't agree on what caused the problem or what the solution is. That makes it a...

We often think of leadership as a title, but really, it’s an action. While some challenges just need a solid plan, solving the Kansas Health Gap requires a specific kind of leadership that goes beyond authority.  In Episode 6 of Leading Health, Ed O’Malley and Susan Kang unpack the three reasons why this gap is so hard to close—from the lack of urgency to the inevitable clash of values. Joined by...

In this bridge episode between Parts 1 and 2 of the Leading Health book, we pause to recap where we've been and preview what's coming. We revisit the core arguments from our first five episodes — from capital H Health versus lower h health, to the 30,000 Kansans who hold civic authority and why they matter — before revealing the central thesis of Part 2: Kansas's health gap is not a health challen...

What would it look like if Kansas became the healthiest state in the nation — and what would it take to get there? In Chapter 5 of Leading Health, we cast a bold vision of what Kansas at #1 in America’s Health Rankings could mean for real people. It would look like fewer Kansans going hungry, more kids reading at grade level, and hundreds of thousands fewer people struggling with substance use, ju...

What happens when our state ranks 29th in Health? More importantly, what does it take to change where we rank in America’s Health Rankings? This episode explores the uncomfortable truth behind Kansas's health rankings and challenges listeners to move beyond easy explanations. We examine why leadership must start with dissatisfaction, how collective action differs from individual effort, and what i...

What if the secret to Kansas's economic future isn't just about business growth—but about the health of every single person in the state? In this conversation, we explore why America's Health Rankings matter far beyond the healthcare sector, and how 30,000 influential Kansans hold the key to reversing our state's decades-long health decline. Highlights • Kansas has fallen from 8th to 27th in Ameri...

What happens when the people with power and influence in our communities fail to act on the factors that create Health? The data tells a sobering story: stroke victims, ER visits, and cancer diagnoses are all trending upward. This isn't just a healthcare problem—it's a leadership problem. We explore the concept of Kansas's "30,000"—the elected officials, nonprofit executives, pastors, business lea...

What if the biggest health crisis in Kansas isn't happening in hospitals at all? After touring one of America's best health systems and witnessing cutting-edge stroke treatments and trauma care, host Ed O’Malley left feeling worried instead of impressed. The problem isn't that we lack brilliant doctors—it's that we need more and more of their brilliance every year. Everything is trending up and to...