Hello, everyone. This is Jacob Emerson with the Becker's Pay Your Issues podcast. Thrilled today to be joined by a special guest. Melissa Skotigard is the chair of the Cigna Group Foundation. Melissa, thank you so much for taking the time to sit down with us on the podcast today. Thank you. Thanks for having me, Jacob. Well, Melissa, we're super glad to have you
join us for the recording today. But before we dive into everything we wanna talk with you about, can you tell us a little bit more about yourself, your background in health care, and what it is that you're doing today at the Cigna Group? Terrific. So, Jacob, again, thank you for having me.
So today, I had communications at the Cigna Group, I've been in communications here since 2018, and I also have the privilege of serving as the chair of the Cigna Group Foundation and heading our community programs. I'll note though that I started my career way back many, many, many years ago in social work. I worked with the mentally ill and I worked with with homeless families.
So what I love about what I get to do today is I really get to drive systemic change in health care with my role and leading the foundation. And I also get to work grassroots as a board member at Make A Wish Connecticut, something I'm really passionate about. So I get to blend both systemic change in health care with being active, at the at the grassroots level. Fantastic. So a long history with the Cigna Group.
And as part of that, from what I understand, the company has launched a refreshed community engagement strategy that started last year. Tell us a little bit more about that. What does that entail, and and what's happening with that this year? Yeah. Good. Great. Thanks for the question. So yes, we launched a refresh community engagement strategy about a year ago now, and for us, we took a step back coming out of the pandemic
and really looked at our programs. A lot of things were changing in the environment. And I'll just couple I'll just cite a couple of them. First is our employees were coming back into the office, and what we found was our employees really wanted to get involved in the community and have more collaboration and team activities with their colleagues, and volunteerism is a great way to do it. So that was that was kind of number
one for us. Number two was the nature of nonprofits themselves changed through the pandemic, and the needs of community organizations, changed. So that was also a force of change. The third dynamic for the Cigna group was we had a couple of signature programs that we put into place actually at the beginning of the pandemic. One in particular called healthier kids for our future, which was a five year commitment. And that program came to its natural end.
And so we had an opportunity to take a step back and look at refreshing our strategy. With that, we decided to to really go after best practices and look at fewer grants and bigger grants so that we could have more impact and outcomes with our community partners.
The other thing I'd mention is again our employees really wanted to get involved in community activities and so for us we stepped back and took a pivot to focus on three primary areas of giving instead of one signature program with Healthier Kids for our Future. So those three areas are one, youth mental health. Two is a focus on veterans and in particular housing and security for veterans, and the third is around health equity.
The way that we got to those three really was aligning around our business priorities and focus. So starting with what do we do and how can we make an impact. Secondly, is where our employee passions are, and third is where our customers are based. So we also looked at, our customers, and we looked at data around where we have high and very high social determinants of health needs and tried to prioritize our focus, in that way.
Got it. Understood. So your employees were or they were coming back to the office post pandemic. You wanted them more involved in in the foundation's work. Nonprofit needs a change post pandemic, and and, ultimately, you're looking to make a bigger impact. So take us through why why the foundation chose the specific commitments that it did, and what are some of the goals associated with with each one of those? Perfect. So I'll start with the first one, youth
mental health. And and I'm a parent, a parent of two teenagers. So this is certainly near and dear to my heart. Again, coming out of the pandemic, we saw as as a nation in a global community arise in youth mental health and the needs around around mental health. In fact, I, the CDC just had a study that one in five high school students considered suicide in 2023. That's alarming. That's alarming as a parent, and it's it's alarming as as just a leader and a community leader.
Secondly, on veterans, so switching to veterans, this one is also critically important. Veterans are experiencing housing instability and they have increased odds of mental distress and also suicide. So again, uphill battles, some incredible barriers facing veterans, forty thousand veterans go without shelter on any given night in The US. And so really focusing on, housing and security is the focus there.
The third is around health equity. And we know that 80% of a person's health is affected by things outside of the doctor's office. So think about things like healthy foods, transportation, getting to to the doctor, and health literacy are absolutely essential. So we focused on that third area around health equity for that reason.
I would just also call out that we looked at again where we have customers and patients of the Cigna group and according to our data where there's high and very high social determinants of health risks. And we also focused further based on that data in 10 states and limited international support because we don't have unlimited resources.
So in addition to the three areas of focus that I, spoke about, also where we focus, from a geographic standpoint, we also, zeroed in on so that we could have bigger impact in fewer states and in fewer areas of focus. Alright. Well, understood, Melissa. So teen mental health issues, veterans care, health equity, all clearly a top priority, for the for the foundation right now. Can you expand on any of these initiatives for us?
What how how many in terms of the grants, how large they are that are going to these groups, and and any feedback you're hearing, on the ground, from some of the the people that you're serving. Yeah. Certainly. Thanks for the question. So we have committed more than 27,000,000 in grants over three years.
That number, Jacob, varies year to year. So I'm not going to give you a hard and fast number of how many grants we'll give go forward because we really look at who are the right partners, and based on the applications that come in. I will though give you just a couple of examples to the nonprofits and we've had 60 grants, so far.
Just a few examples to call out. So in the youth bucket, the McCall Foundation, which is here in Connecticut, which is where I'm based, they have a new Spanish speaking clinical team and expanded access to culturally appropriate care to residents in the Waterbury, Connecticut area. And from a national perspective, we've partnered up with the Boys and Girls Club of America as a national partner for youth commitment. And in fact, I was just in the boys and girls club in Pasadena last week.
And that particular club, as you might imagine, with the recent wildfires in the area, the the club kids, they are facing just incredible hardship, and that club is a lifeline for those children. More than 70 families in that club have been impacted by the fires. People have lost their homes and also schools in the area, have been lost. So the Boys and Girls Club is a really important partner for us, and an amazing nonprofit that just does incredible work across The US.
In the veterans area, a couple of examples. Operation Finally Home provides homes and and home modifications for wounded, ill, and injured veterans and first responders and their families in Florida, Georgia, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas. So again, that's that's in veterans.
In health equity we focused in two communities really trying to go deeper into specific communities and again looked at data based on the social determinants of health needs and so those two communities are Houston where we're focused on obesity and diabetes and Hartford which is really focused around access to care, how do we get to primary care, so think mobile vans, really helping to make sure people can get to the care that that they need.
So those two were stood up actually last, those two community programs were stood up last, and a couple of grantee partners include Bread of Life, the Hispanic Health Coalition and that's in Houston, And in Hartford, the Hartford Public Library, Malta House, and Wheeler Clinic have been amazing partners, for us as well.
Wow. Well, clearly, such creative and impactful work going on in communities all over the country, and it's it's interesting to hear you talk about how data driven this process is as well for you all. Melissa, earlier in our conversation, you were talking about how you you've really worked to get more Cigna employees involved in this important work. Can you can you talk to us a
little bit more about that? How are employees involved directly in in this all, and and why is it so important ultimately? Yeah. So, for our employees, it it really is volunteerism is part of who we are. It is a pillar of our values and and why people come to work here is our focus on community and giving back. As you would expect from a health services company, it just is a fabric of who we are.
And coming again, out of the pandemic, what we found with our employees is a big desire to really be engaged and be active in in the community. Through the pandemic, many people, certainly myself included, I felt an absence of being connected to the community in the way that I can through volunteerism. Still could be active through things like, you know, online programs and and writing letters and making calls to elderly,
shut ins. So certainly, it was active, but, our folks really wanted to get much more hands on and engage with each other. We also, put some more of our resources and our grant dollars behind our employees, giving back. So if our employees, volunteer a certain amount of time, we will donate, small grants on their behalf to nonprofits in recognition of that volunteer time.
So again, for us, it's just about tremendous pride and as a result of the programs that we put into place, we saw almost a 30% year over year increase in volunteerism between 2024 and 2023. And not only is that good for our employee morale and productivity, but it also equates to more than 5,600,000 in economic value right back into the communities in recognition of that time. Wow. I mean, it's amazing to hear. That's such an enterprise wide focus for you all.
Before we go, Melissa, what else are we missing? Any final thoughts or final bits of advice you wanna offer the other health care leaders listening in right now? Yeah. Look, this is not easy to pivot. A company is giving, giving grants and and volunteers and is incredibly personal to to people. People care deeply about causes in the community.
But I would advocate to other leaders and business leaders to not be afraid of change, to really be guided by data and to help understand where your dollars can have the most impact, and also to really tap into your employees. At least for for the Cigna group, our people want to do even more. And so tapping into that employee pride and engaging them, I think, is is also something I would advise.
Wonderful. Well, Melissa, thank you so much for taking the time to sit down with us and for sharing a little bit about the important work that's going on under your leadership. We really appreciate it. Thanks, Jacob. And if you'd like to listen to more podcasts from Becker's Health Care, you can visit beckershospitalreview.com.