If Access Health Executive Director Jeff Fortenbacher raised the agency for its first 25 years, Vondie Woodbury definitely birthed that child beginning in 1995 with a W.K. Kellogg Foundation grant to the Community Foundation for Muskegon County.
“They say when you create things you should never end up running them,” Vondie said. “When Access Health hired Jeff in 1999, he began to put his own imprint on it with his expertise in behavioral health. I couldn’t have done that.”
What Vondie did was create a two-year engagement process that relied on the participation of up to 900 members of the community. The Kellogg Foundation provided the Muskegon community foundation with a $3.4 million Comprehensive Community Health Models of Michigan grant over five-years to create a plan to address the growing number of uninsured, low-income workers.
A core group of 40 – representing healthcare providers, physician groups, local government, employers and community leaders – did the hard work of creating what became the three-share benefit plan that was affordable for employees and small employers. Vondie credits the relationship between foundation president the late Patricia Johnson and Michigan health department chief Patrick Babcock – former high school classmates in Muskegon – to overcoming the barriers in the way of creating Access Health.
Jeff eventually took Access Health on its 25-year journey and Vondie – with a background in leading U.S. Sen. Don Riegle’s (D-Mich) state offices – went on to head the Muskegon Health Project and lead the former Mercy Hospital community benefit programs. Vondie ended her formal healthcare career as the vice president of community benefit for the Trinity Health corporation, which continues to own and operate Muskegon’s consolidated hospital system.
Vondie continues consulting across the nation for community benefit programs and health plans like Access Health’s tri-share – employer, employee and government/community. Early success had national media from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal come to Muskegon to tell the story. Vondie traveled across the nation promoting the unique health plan to other communities.
“People don’t realize that this is a one-of-a-kind agency created right here in Muskegon, for Muskegon,” Vondie said. “I don’t think we see how unique Access Health really is.”
If the original Kellogg grant launched Access Health, a recent highly competitive 10-year $12 million planning grant from the National Institute of Health will propel it for the next 25 years. The federal funds provided to only 24 other communities in the nation will focus on recreating community partnerships to bridge current health benefit challenges to economic stability in Muskegon County, Vondie pointed out. The 2010 federal Affordable Care Act and the 2020 COVID pandemic set up roadblocks that are just now being solved for the next 25 years of Access Health, she said.