Richard Safeer, MD, is the Chief Medical Director of Employee Health and Well-being at Johns Hopkins Medicine, where he leads the acclaimed Healthy at Hopkins strategy. He is the author of A Cure for the Common Company: A Well-Being Prescription for a Happier, Healthier, and More Resilient Workforce. Safeer's work has been featured by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and quoted in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and Fortune Magazine. With a BS in Nutritional Biochemistry from Cornell University, mentored by T. Colin Campbell (author of The China Study), and an MD from SUNY Buffalo, his career spans family medicine, academia, and wellness leadership. At CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, he led groundbreaking initiatives, earning NCQA wellness accreditation.
“Any leader who's listening to this podcast episode today should come to appreciate that you have more impact on the health and well-being of the people you lead than most physicians do because of the sheer amount of time that you spend with your team.”
- Richard Safeer
Website: https://richardsafeer.com/
Hello and welcome everybody to this episode of The Insight Interviews. This is your host, Jason Abell and gosh, I think I say I'm excited about most guests. This particular one, I started researching about a month ago when I saw him on my schedule, and I did get, like, truly jazzed, truly excited. So, listen to this. This guest has had his work featured by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and by the way, that's the CDC, he has also been quoted in periodicals that you might have heard of, such as The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and Fortune Magazine. His name is Dr Richard Safeer, and he currently serves as the Chief Medical Director of Employee Health and Wellbeing for Johns Hopkins Medicine. Oh, oh, and by the way, he's the author of his bestselling book, The Cure for the Common Company. Dr Richard Safeer, welcome to the show.
Thank you, Jason. It's great to be here, and by the way, please call me Rich.
Great, Rich. Gonna ask you a question that has nothing to do with anything that I just said. Well, actually it may have everything to do with it, which is the first question that we ask every guest. And you had said that you listened to an episode or two of ours, so you know where I'm going. Who or what as you and I engage one another today are you grateful for?
You know what? I did hear this question, and I had all these initial responses like, who am I not grateful for? Or what am I not grateful for? I mean, Jason, I feel very fortunate because I've gotten into a pretty steady gratitude practice where every morning, I come downstairs, make my coffee, and once it's ready, I have a seat in a quiet area, and I just ask myself, what am I grateful for today? Now, interesting today, not only did I do that, but I listened to Tamara Levitt Calm app, and she had a piece on a master class on gratitude, and she had a really interesting exercise just about looking around where you are and recognizing all the different people who contributed to making that space. Whether it was the people who might have planted the trees outside that you're looking at or the structure that you're seeing. It really opened my eyes to how grateful I am for all the people who've made me who I am today.
Yeah, so good. Thank you for that. We run an episode around Thanksgiving where we do a compilation of that year's answers, and I have a feeling that one may hit that episode.
So, the highlight reel.
Yeah, the highlight reel. The highlight reel of gratitude, right? There's probably some irony in there somewhere, but I feel like already today, as I engage the rest of the things that I'm going to be engaged in today, I'll really be looking around that, okay, who built the structure that I'm in right now? How did this microphone come to being and so things like that. So yeah, thanks for having us think about that today. I want to dive in. As I was doing my research, you got me thinking about some of the work that we do and one of the workshops that I've been asked to do a lot recently is this workshop called the mindset of blank. Whatever industry, whatever company I'm asked to speak to, it'll be the mindset of the mortgage industry, or the mindset of personal finance or whatever. And I usually have four keys after we go over what the heck is mindset anyways, and how does that impact you in how you present yourself and the work that you do and the clients that you serve and the organization that you work for. Usually, I have four keys that I end up going over talking about mindset. My very first one is what I call self-care. In other words, boy, you better take care of yourself first, meaning your vessel, your mind and your body. And I even quote this book by this fellow named Jack Garoppo. He wrote this jawbreaker of a book. I was assuming you may have heard of it.
Sure, I've heard him speak too.
Oh, gosh. We have that to talk about as well. But The Corporate Athlete, he wrote a long, long time ago, and it has all kinds of fun stuff in it, but at the end of the day, one of my big takeaways from it was, look, the healthier you are, and the better you take care of yourself, and when I say yourself, I literally mean physically and mentally and emotionally, so blocking and tackling things like drinking more water, moving your body more, paying attention to what nutrition goes into your mouth, and what you're listening to, like those types of things. The self-care piece. I just I really riff on that for a long time, and I usually have pretty good back and forth in this workshop on just that particular key, that topic, but when I say all that to you, what I really want to get is tell me, it's kind of embarrassing, but am I on the right track there? I mean, what is somebody like you, you know, you're quoted in Fortune Magazine, you wrote a book on a topic that includes these types of things, like, when you hear me say that, like, validate me, contradict me, argue with me, like, tell me your thoughts when you hear that.
So, Jason, I've been fortunate to build a career in the employee health and wellbeing space for more than 25 years. What I'm specifically known for nationally and internationally is how to build a healthy team culture and a healthy workplace culture. And when I say health, it has to do with physical, mental, emotional, social, spiritual, etc.; we call it a wellbeing culture. And to tell you how important self-care is, the book I wrote is not a self-care book. The book is for people who are a team leader, an organizational leader, human resources, people who do the same work I do, about how to create that wellbeing culture, and every chapter has a call out box that has the title, put your own mask on first. Because at the end of the day, if the team leader is not well themselves, they're not going to be able to show up the way they want to. They're not going to be able to deliver the performance that they hope to, and they won't hit their potential. That's how important it is, Jason.
Well, you're definitely talking my language now. We have, we have clients that will come to us, and we hear language like our people need help, and I need you to coach them and the first thing we say is, well, talk to you first. What’s going on with you? And even to the point where, if we get too much resistance there, and it's like no, no, them, them, them, and they're not willing to look at themselves first, we usually offer some alternatives for them, other than Rewire, because everything starts with the leader. So again, I'd like to get your take on that, and any type of insights you have around that.
Well, unfortunately, you are not the first person to share something similar and unfortunately, there are many leaders who lack the introspection, who lack the patience to slow down long enough and try to appreciate all the different factors that go into the success of a team. And you know Jason? At some point, you have to recognize that people are raised for 18 years before they're set out into the world, and that perhaps we can't help every one of them. So, I mean, I think your strategy is very reasonable, and it allows you to help the leaders who are ready to be helped. People have to come to the table ready to look at the whole picture and not just point fingers.
Well, I already like you more now that we've talked for 10 minutes, because you've been validating me. So, thank you. That's important to my personality. But let's take a step or two back. How did someone like you come to be where you are now is kind of one of the preeminent experts on this topic? Like, take us back a little bit. How did all of this happen? How did you get to do and have the expertise that that you have right now, Rich?
So, it's not something I thought I'd be doing when I went to medical school. I thought I'd be like, you know, Marcus Wellby, for those, anybody out there who remembers, you know, the general practitioner who saw his patients and worked with them for 30 years. Well, I ended up in a suburban family practice for almost two years, and by the time I left, and the reason why I left is I felt like, hey, this system isn't working for me. I'm seeing my patients every 15 minutes, and that's not nearly enough time to make a true difference, to help them understand the cause of their problems. And in the meantime, they're spending almost 2000 hours a year in the workplace. That's where I need to be. Any leader who's listening to this podcast episode today, should come to appreciate that you have more impact on the health and wellbeing of the people you lead than most physicians do, because of the sheer amount of time that you spend with your team. And Jason, I wanted to be in the workplace, so I had a not a straight path, but a circuitous path to where I am today. You know, in retrospect, and I look at my childhood, there were some things that probably portended me to end up where I am today. My father was an employee in a chemical engineering company, and they used to have these poster contests, and you had to create a poster about workplace safety, and I entered three times, I won twice, and maybe that impacted me. So, you never know what comes up from your childhood and impacts you later as an adult.
Yeah, yeah. So, I understand the path a little bit. That makes that makes sense. The fact that you want it to be in the workplace, that makes sense to me. Tell me some stories. Maybe there's clients, maybe it's some of the work that you're doing at Johns Hopkins right now. Is there a story or two that you could tell us that really shows the impact of the work that you're doing?
Yeah, I'll tell you one of our major thrusts. One element that a lot of leaders understandably want to know is, how are you measuring the impact you're making? We're giving you these resources, and we want to know, how are you going to show us that you're making a difference. Jason, when I first arrived at Johns Hopkins in 2012, I literally walked around the campus a few months after I arrived, saying to myself, well, how am I going to move this ship? For those of you not familiar, Johns Hopkins Medicine is the largest private employer in the state of Maryland, and we have 40,000 employees. It goes well beyond our flagship hospital, Johns Hopkins Hospital. And you know, there's a lot of priorities of poor for our institution, and at the time, in 2012 our patients and to through today, understandably, they are our focus. And we have gotten much better about supporting the health and wellbeing of our workforce. Jason, after much evaluation, we arrived at using the Center for Disease Control and Prevention Worksite Health Scorecard. It is an organizational assessment tool. It has more than 100 questions and 16 categories ranging anywhere from vaccines, to nutrition, to diabetes, and when we first participated, Johns Hopkins Medicine fell below the benchmark for other large employers. Now we've completed it 10 years in a row. We are now, and we have been for at least five years at the top of the scale. That's actually why our work is featured by the CDC on their website, for how we have moved the needle and caused change across Johns Hopkins Medicine.
So, I'm already writing that down, and I have a comment, a question. So, the comment is, well, maybe this is part of a question too, but that scorecard, is that something that is linkable? Like, is that something we could put in the show notes, or is that like an invite only, private type of thing?
So, the article on the CDC website, the case study that features Johns Hopkins Medicine, we can get you a link to that.
Okay. And most of our audience is C suite, presidents, founders, high level sales people, but there are people that might be hearing this and going, what is my score? What is my score of my organization? If someone wanted to do that and just start with a baseline, how does one go about doing that?
So, I would go to the CDC website and search for Worksite Health Scorecard.
Okay.
Now, if any of your listeners have access to some of the health journals, we've had two articles published in peer reviewed journals that speak to the effectiveness of our strategy. We actually just submitted our impact over 10 years to a third journal, and I hope it's going to be accepted this fall,
Sure.
So you could go to Google Scholar and search my last name: S, A, F, E, E, R, and you'll see the papers I've published, including the ones about the CDC scorecard.
Well, thank you for that. Now to the question part. So, results that I've heard so far from you is, hey, we went from below average to well above average over a 10-year period of time with really a marquee name, Johns Hopkins Medicine. Great. That's amazing. Tell me about boots on the ground, actual data results. Not just scorecards things, but is there empirical data? Not empirical, but what are some success stories that have come out of, okay, the scorecard is higher, that's great. I can report a higher scorecard. As an organization, what am I going to see, touch and feel as a result of this higher scorecard?
So, as a result of the scorecard, you're going to be able to find several things have changed over the past 12 years. One, the physical environment has changed. When you walk into our cafeterias now, you will find the healthy foods are marked with a green leaf. You'll also notice the healthy foods are sold at a discount against the less healthy foods. There's still choice, but we have used behavioral economics to make it easier to make the healthy choice. Jason, you're going to see many more Lactation Support rooms available to new moms. You're going to see relaxation rooms. You're going to notice signs and other cues to encourage people to have a healthy day. You're going to see more leaders messaging, either in emails or in newsletters, about their role and what they do to support their health and wellbeing through the day. You're going to recognize the benefits and resources that are available to you to make it easier to have a healthy workday. But still, leaders want to see data.
Yeah, I was just gonna say those things. Like, I'm smiling because I love all those things, and I'm so happy that those types of things are happening, but if I play the cynical leader that says, and again, this isn't me, but I run across these types, like, yeah, yeah, yeah, but what's it gonna do to my revenue and my expenses, Rich?
So, when we first did the conversion of the beverage, so a healthy beverage strategy, we were able to show by taking a sample of vending machines, that we change the purchasing habits of our workforce so that they're purchasing many more healthy beverages than unhealthy beverages. And the literature is just full of data about what that means for the risk of different diseases, and it what it means for the ability for employees to stay focused and engaged after lunch, instead of being sleepy because they're having a post sugar rush that causes them fatigue.
Yep.
We have data around health impact. So, one of our other major areas is to look at blood pressure. Every employer should consider thinking about blood pressure and its impact on its workforce. And the reason why, Jason, is because hypertension is one of the most common chronic diseases in every company.
Yeah.
And it's not only common, but also very expensive. Not only do you probably have between 40 and 50% of your workforce who has hypertension, if you have the full span of ages, but you probably have another 25% who's at risk. So, we have been working on blood pressure for five years. And Jason, we've done a couple of cohort snapshots, and we have found in those two cohort snapshots that people who have engaged have seen their blood pressure go down year over year. And that's important, right? We want to make sure what we're doing is making a difference.
I mean, if you're telling me that if I run a large organization and half of my people have high blood pressure and another 25% are at risk, that's 75% of my workforce that's not doing well?
That’s right.
Yeah. Now I'm starting to get it.
And Jason, we’ve got to be smart. We can't just give our employees all these benefits and expect they're going to use them. That’s not human nature. We have to make the circumstances that allow our employees to make healthy choices and have healthy emotions throughout the day, and that is true when it comes to blood pressure. There are many things that we can do beyond giving our employees an app that they can do a self-paced program to learn about how to lower their blood pressure. We've got to get beyond benefits and programs.
So, is it okay if I dig a little deeper? If I scratch another level? So, with the work that you're doing, and again, I just think it's important work and I love what you're saying. But to go another level down, with either your book or the studies or the data, the research that that you're talking about, are there other stories that you could tell our audience that would be so compelling to a founder, a president, a CEO, where they go, and again, I'm playing devil's advocate here, so I have to give all these disclaimers here. I don't feel this way, but I'm just saying, even if I go, oh, what he's saying, yeah, that sounds good, but you know, whatever. Like, is there a compelling story that you could tell that would just be like, oh, the productivity went up X percent? Or the revenue was, yeah, there was a palpable change there. Or maybe not, and there's an answer for that. But yeah, how would you respond to that?
So, Jason, first, I would say there are a lot of different sources that your listeners, your clients, can go to learn about the benefits of employee health and wellbeing, including my book, A Cure for the Common Company, because if they just read the introduction, they'll get a sense. And you can read the introduction for free on Amazon, right? Or you can look inside sample. And the book is filled with stories about success. Now, Jason Johns Hopkins Medicine is not supporting the health and wellbeing of our workforce because we're trying to increase our revenue. That is not why we're doing it, and I'd be a little bit concerned if that's your client's primary reason. In fact, I don't think that's a good reason. I think that every decision maker needs to understand that your revenue will improve when you have a workforce that is first present. They're not out sick. Second, present. In other words, they're actually in the workplace, and they're able to be focused. And third, they feel good about being present and that they're going to stay there. Otherwise, you're going to have turnover. You're going to have vacancies. There are so many reasons to not look specifically at revenue generation from this strategy. I could go on, like my passion is just boiling.
Yeah, no, no. And that's what I wanted to push you towards, like yeah, that's where I wanted to get. Again, I gave the disclaimers because I recognize I'm playing devil's advocate. I recognize that we already know the answers. But I wanted to see where you got there. In other words, and I'm paraphrasing, but it's so silly not to do these things, but it's not going to be, hey, I put a water machine in the office, and now, you know, our revenue grew by 20%.It doesn't work that way.
Jason, I just need to emphasize something that, you know, most leaders want to support the health and wellbeing of their workforce or their team, they just don't know how to, and that's understandable. People going through their MBA, or their undergraduate degree aren’t getting training on this area. That's the big reason why I wrote the book. It's the big reason why I train leaders across Johns Hopkins Medicine on their role. And what leaders want to understand is that they don't have to spend a lot of money. And really some of the best ways to help your employees shouldn't cost a lot of money and run the other way if a vendor knocks on your door and tells you that you have to spend a lot of money to succeed in the support of the health and wellbeing of your workplace.
That is a great segue of a place that I want it to get to. You know, the name of the show is the Insight Interviews, and if we do have the attention of somebody that is in decision making authority of an organization, and they are just like, I know Dr. Safeer is right, and I know I've known this for a long time, but I just haven't known where to start, but I know that this is important, what are some easy like low hanging fruit, some easy wins that if I'm the leader of an organization, I'm not really doing anything right now, but I know I kind of should be doing something, are there are some places to start? Some easy wins for me?
Yeah, so, Jason, our work probably overlaps quite a bit. So, just having a leader understand that they have an impact on the health and wellbeing of their team is a really great opening conversation. And they could either read about it, or someone needs to explain this to them, because, you know, not everyone has the introspection to understand that. At the same time, we all have bosses, and we all understand that our boss impacts us, so we have to think in reverse. How is that coming down?
Yes.
Now here's a low hanging fruit, Jason. Your listeners can go to YouTube and search for 10-minute wellbeing tips for managers, hyphen, Hopkins or hyphen S, A, F, E, E, R. We have 46 recorded episodes that are literally 10 minutes. We put this together and delivered it virtually in 2022, because our managers don't have a lot of time, and our managers are across a huge geographic space, and we know that they want to support the health and wellbeing. And so, they're now available on YouTube and available Tt anybody who's interested in taking 10 minutes out of their day.
Very cool. Thank you for that. I wrote that down because I'm going to look it up. I'm very interested, and that's a lot of work. I know each one is only 10 minutes, but there's a bunch of them. That's a lot of work there.
Yeah.
So, that’s great, and we'll make sure that that link is in the show notes, at least to get you started on that channel, or wherever that is. Since I have you right now, what are one or two of the hot takes?
Well, you mentioned self-care. There are simple things like just listening. A lot of a lot of employees want to be heard, but there are other items that most businesspeople don't recognize the impact of on health and wellbeing. So, priorities. When we talk about priorities as a leader, we're trying to figure out how we're going to succeed, right? How are we going to reach our goals, but we also have to understand priorities are important for our wellbeing, because many employees don't know what their priorities are, and they keep getting messages on their plate, do this, do that, do this, do that, and it can feel overwhelming, and it raises our stress level. When leaders help their team understand the priorities, it lowers their stress level. And a priority list must be a limited list. If you have a list of 10 things, that is not a priority list.
Right on. Yeah, it's so true. So true. He can't have five number one goals, right? You can only have one number one goal. Yeah. So good, so good. In doing my research, I ran across this term that I don't know if you came up with it, but I feel like I've referenced it before, but I'd love for you to define what you mean by lifestyle medicine?
Yeah, well, lifestyle medicine is the use of lifestyle to prevent and reverse chronic disease. Now, the American College of lifestyle medicine has a definition. I'm pretty sure I did not just give you their exact definition, but my point for raising the college's name is that they have six specific domains of lifestyle that they focus on. And I mention it because this is their 20th anniversary, and it was a college that started with just a few dozen healthcare professionals, and now has over 10,000 members.
Oh, boy.
Yeah, there are physicians who are board certified in lifestyle medicine. I'm one of them. And that means that they have special training and are qualified to help their patients understand nutrition and movement and stress reduction and addressing addictions, like to nicotine and alcohol, and the importance of social connectedness and sleep. Not just understand it but be able and capable of helping their patients learn new skills to embrace those domains.
You're making me think of a topic. I'm reading Peter Attias book right now. I think it's called Outlive and he talks about medicine. This is his verbiage. So, you're the doctor, so I don't know how widely used this is, but he talks about the difference between medicine 2.0 and medicine 3.0 and medicine 3.0 seems to overlap a bunch with what you're saying. In other words, way more preventative types of things, rather than what medicine has traditionally been, which is reactive with medicine and things like that. But more of the lifestyle things that you can do ahead of time. So, again, I don't know if you're familiar with any of his work or not, but that what you just said about lifestyle medicine makes me think of that book.
One of the greatest opportunities, Jason, that America has is to recognize that healthy lifestyle not only can prevent chronic disease, but it can actually be the treatment of chronic disease. I have seen patients decrease their dosage of blood pressure medicine, diabetes medicine. I've even had a patient who was able to get off her CPAP machine because of her ability to adopt healthier choices.
That’s amazing.
And Jason, we did this in the context of me leading the employee health and wellbeing strategy in the workplace. It's not just practicing physicians who can have a substantial impact. If you're a leader, you have the ability to make the right choices that will help your employees adopt healthier habits, and you too can play doctor. I don't recommend any drugs but you can have an impact.
Yeah, my health coach wife, you just endeared yourself to her, because she is such a big advocate for just advocating for yourself and your own health, even when you're literally in the examination room with a doctor asking questions. If you don't understand something, gaining clarity, speaking up for yourself, like that type of thing, and to me that bleeds over into, how am I treating myself on a daily basis on this lifestyle piece? So well, I know we're we're starting to round third and get to home base, where we need to finish, which I'm extremely disappointed about that we need to finish, but this conversation has been enlightening for me so far. Is there anything that I that I haven't asked you, that you want to make sure under the umbrella of what we've talked about so far, that our listeners here take note of?
Not that you missed something, but rather that I want to expand on something. It's this idea that most leaders have never been trained on how to lead with health and wellbeing, and they've also not been given like good, I think, solid advice other than, hey, outsource this process. The book a Cure for the Common Company, it is a blueprint that you can follow and a how-to so that you can get actively engaged. It's much more than a philosophical or scientific book. Not at all. It's a very readable book that you can start to apply quickly. And I just want leaders to know that you have much more control than you think.
Yes, so good. You know, we, we run a mindset coaching company, which, you know, can be very ethereal. Not how do I touch the mindset thing, but at the end of the day, people need to take action and sometimes we just need to be led by the hand. I know that in certain aspects of my life, sometimes I'm just like, oh gosh, just tell me what to do for a minute until I can gain some ground on my own. And when I heard you just describe the book, I feel like it's one of those things. So, if you're listening to this right now, and you've heard this conversation and anything has been enlightening to you, and you're just looking for a place to start, one, the YouTube videos, that'll be a link in the show notes, and two, this book, and we'll put a link to Amazon, where people can get it. So yeah, thank you for that. Thanks for going over that. Dr. Rich Safeer, you have brought it and brought it really good. Maybe I'll change the format of the show just so we can go long form, and you and I can dive in again. But for the topics that we did hit, thank you so much. This was great. I was excited about it. You did not disappoint. Appreciate your expertise, the value that you bring to the market, and yeah, I'm looking forward to just reading the book, looking at the videos, and learning not only how we can improve here at Rewire, but how then we can use this information to pass along to our clients.
Thank you so much. Yeah, I appreciate you helping introduce this topic to your clients, to your audience, because it's just not getting the attention I think it deserves. Of course, I'm biased. Jason, if the listeners want to follow up with me, you can find me on LinkedIn, you can also go to my website, RichardSafeer.com, if you want to read more about the art and science of supporting health and wellbeing in the workplace. And Jason, I'm looking forward to people exploring A Cure for the Common Workday, which is a second publication. A Cure for the Common Workday is a workday journal for people to help with their self-care.
Oh, nice. Oh, perfect. All right, good, very good. Well, a lot of practical advice, practical insights, things that people, if they're interested in this topic, they can actually go do, very actionable, which I love. So, yeah, thank you so much for that. Dr. Richard Safeer, I appreciate your time and your expertise today and like I say, what you're doing at Johns Hopkins and what you're doing for the greater world. Thank you.
Thank you.
Dr. Richard Safeer, so many insights as per use. Well, first of all, those YouTube videos and his book, that just sounds like a new no brainer. We'll put those in the in the show notes. This thing about the leader having the most impact on the health and wellbeing of the people that they lead, just by the sheer time that they spend with them, that is something that leaders just need to realize. I know that in middle management, upper middle management, there's a lot of, hey, I want to move up the ladder, I want to have more sphere of influence, I want to get paid more, you know, those types of things, but the influence that we have on people cannot be understated. Even more than the sphere of influence in some cases that our employees have around them, whether it's family members or whatever, just because we spend so much time with them. So, that's something that I had an insight about. And then, boy, his definition of lifestyle medicine and the different places that that can go, and preventative lifestyle and the way that that impacts our health and our wellbeing is just huge. More reading for me to do on that, and I will be reading his book. So anyways, those are my insights. But dear listeners, as we end every episode of The Insight Interviews, it doesn't much matter to you what my insights were, but what really matters to you is what insights did you have?
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