Creating a Culture of Health at Johns Hopkins Medicine

Abstract

includes 6 hospitals (4 in Maryland, 1 in Washington, DC and 1 in Florida), the largest primary care network in the state of Maryland, Johns Hopkins International, a home care company, 4 health insurance plans and many other assets. Johns Hopkins Medicine is a complex organization with many different cultures varying by geographic region, business, and profession. In 2013, JHM issued a 5 year strategic plan to ''actively support a healthy workforce.'' As a result of its complex structure, it was vital for JHM to identify and meet the needs of its subcultures in order to fully support healthy lifestyles across the enterprise. This article describes the processes enacted within entity, job responsibility, team, and peer subcultures to create a sustainable culture of health, along with a description of JHM measurement strategies. It highlights features that are not particularly common within published literature. Guiding Framework Johns Hopkins Medicine utilized Judd Allen's health framework, depicted in Figure 1, as a guide to identify and address opportunities for enhancing our approach to creating a healthy culture. 1 Inclusion of a strategic objective to support a healthy workforce throughout JHM demonstrates our shared values. Johns Hopkins Medicine integrated elements from Allen's other 4 pillars (norms, touch points, social climate, and peer support) to create a health culture on macro and micro level, some of which are highlighted in the remaining sections of this article.

Editor’s Desk - Knowing Well, Reading Well

“…I was first exposed to his work developing and implementing culture change efforts at Johns Hopkins Medicine (JHM) when he contributed to a 2018 issue of The Art of Health Promotion (TAHP) in this journal on the topic of addressing subcultures. 11 His use of theory to inform his approach and the CDC Worksite Health ScoreCard to engage leadership across the 12 entities comprising JHM garnered my respect and I was eager to learn more about his ongoing efforts to influence culture change within his organization. His book far exceeded my expectations and it’s one of the few books I’d recommend buying for leaders across multiple disciplines within an organization, including physicians and healthcare system leaders.…”