AHA Names Rural Hospital Leadership Award Winner and Finalists

WASHINGTON (January 31, 2022) – The American Hospital Association (AHA) today announced Sky Lakes Medical Center in Klamath Falls, Ore., as the 2021 recipient of the Rural Hospital Leadership Award. The award recognizes small or rural hospital leaders who guide their hospital and community through change and innovation. The awardees display outstanding leadership, responsiveness to their community’s health needs and a collaborative process that has led to measurable outcomes. The award will be presented at the AHA’s 35th Rural Health Care Leadership Conference, which will be held in Phoenix February 6-9, 2022.

Sky Lakes Medical Center is a 176-bed hospital serving about 80,000 people in several rural Oregon and California counties. Through collaboration with a community-wide coalition, Sky Lakes Medical Center began a comprehensive initiative to improve population health. This resulted in the 18-acre Klamath Works Campus, which helps residents with employment and economic opportunity. Sky Lakes Medical Center was also recognized as a Blue Zones Project, a designation that provides resources and support for initiatives to help residents make healthy choices a more permanent part of their lives.

A critical part of these initiatives is the Sky Lakes Medical Center Wellness Center, which offers classes in fitness, mindfulness, nutrition and lifestyle coaching. These elements demonstrate an effective model for strengthening individual health and well-being and guiding long-term progress in addressing the societal factors that influence health. A comprehensive community health needs assessment served as a foundation for all of this work.

The AHA Rural Hospital Leadership Award also recognized Winona Health in Winona, Minn., and St. Charles Madras in Madras, Ore., as finalists.

Winona Health is an independent, nonprofit, community-owned healthcare system in southeastern Minnesota. Among other initiatives, in 2016 Winona Health, with area public, private, and nonprofit community partners, launched the Winona Wellbeing Collaborative. The collaborative developed the Winona Community HUB, based on the evidence-based Pathways Community HUB model. In this model, community health workers positively address social determinants of health by removing barriers to care and connecting individuals with the resources they need.

St. Charles Madras is a critical access hospital serving a patient population that is one-third American Indian, one-third Latino and one-third white. Recognizing the need to provide more culturally competent care, Madras secured a grant from the Oregon Office of Rural Health to invest in these efforts with its workforce.  

The dynamic leadership teams at Sky Lakes Medical Center, Winona Health and St. Charles Madras highlight the many ways in which hospitals and health systems continue to reach beyond their four walls to meet the needs of their communities in innovative ways. 

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Contact:    Sean Barry, (202) 626-2306, sbarry@aha.org
                  Marie Johnson, (202) 626-2351, mjohnson@aha.org
 

About the American Hospital Association
The American Hospital Association (AHA) is a not-for-profit association of health care provider organizations and individuals that are committed to the health improvement of their communities. The AHA advocates on behalf of our nearly 5,000 member hospitals, health systems and other health care organizations, our clinician partners – including more than 270,000 affiliated physicians, 2 million nurses and other caregivers – and the 43,000 health care leaders who belong to our professional membership groups. Founded in 1898, the AHA provides insight and education for health care leaders and is a source of information on health care issues and trends. For more information, visit the AHA website at www.aha.org.