About this Collection
Healthy Kansans contains interviews of individuals who were involved with development and implementation of state health policy from the 1970s through the early decades of the 2000s. Kansas saw a decline in its State Health Performance Indicators during the last 30 years. These interviews will help policymakers understand the evolution of organizations and institutions related to the health of Kansans and determine how effective those organizations and institution have been in promoting a Healthy Kansas. The interviews elicit insights about the policy making process, the assignment of priorities, and the give-and-take involved in reaching final policy decisions.
Interview of Tom Bell, March 6, 2026
Interviewed by Robert St. Peter
Tom Bell served as CEO of the Kansas Hospital Association from 2012 - 2020 when he retired. As the leader of the trade association representing Kansas hospitals, he provided education and advocacy for the 120 hospitals that were his association's members. Bell describes his work mainly as advocating for hospitals in the Kansas Legislature and with the Kansas Congressional Delegation on federal issues. During his interview he identifies several big state issues that impacted his members: Certificate of Need, scope of practice, rural hospitals, medicaid expansion and reimbursements (DRG's). The passage of the Critical Access Hospital Show Morelegislation saved a lot of hospitals and helped solve some problems. Bell said he was constantly looking for ways to balance the competing interests of all the parts of the health care system. He also noted the COVID pandemic had huge, negative impacts that are still being felt. The interview looks at the advantages or disadvantage of being a non-profit hospital vs a for-profit model. It also discussed the need for a state health planning agency to set policy. In response to the question, what are the "top issues that you think we as a state need to be addressing right now for the well-being of hospitals... and the community", Bell indicated workforce was at the top of the list as well as reimbursement and how to help the community access the best level of health care. He concluded the interview by saying, "...what's good for the hospital ought to be what's good for a particular community." Show Less
Interview of Robert Moser, March 10, 2026
Interviewed by Robert St. Peter
Dr. Moser had an unusual background because he went to pharmacy school before deciding to go to medical school. This interview really highlights the difficulties of practicing medicine in a rural area, and shows Moser's innovations in responding to those challenges. He did his residency in his hometown of Tribune; he also credits the business training in Pharmacy school as being helpful in responding to those challenges which included workforce issues. Dr. Moser joined Greely county with Wallace county, expanded the staffing and used a multijurisdictional approach to community health in those two counties. Delivering Show Morebabies was a problem - no backup, no personal time. Moser left Tribune in 2010 to work as Governor Brownback's Secretary of Health and Environment but left 3 years later because of opposition to medicaid expansion. In 2014 he joined the Kansas Heart-Stroke Collaborative - a CMS innovation - and also taught population health and family medicine at KU Medical Center. He describes what they discovered about heart attacks and strokes when they surveyed emergency room data which they used to develop evidence-based guidelines. Show Less
Interview of Maynard Oliverius, March 6, 2026
Interviewed by Robert St. Peter
Maynard Oliverius lays out in clear terms the policy choices the federal government made that shaped the health care system in the country today. Starting in 1946 with the Hill-Burton Act that paid for new hospital facilities, then the creation in 1965 of Medicare and Medicaid to ensure that seniors had a way to pay for health care and medical research, he tracks federal changes through the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid Expansion. He also notes that Kansas was leading other states in health rankings in the early 1990's, but now has fallen significantly behind other states' efforts Show Moreto improve the health of their residents. Access to health care has become a major problem for many Kansans. The interview also touches on the growth of Stormont Vail under his leadership and how it is now a major medical center serving northeast Kansas and is a locally owned, locally operated nonprofit organization. Oliverius concludes by offering his opinion that ideally the country needs to move to a single payer system in order to provide access for all - he describes it as "medicare for all." He expressed concern about the current direction of health policy nationally. Show Less
Interview of Gianfranco Pezzino, January 23, 2026
Interviewed by Robert St. Peter
This interview with Dr. Gianfranco Pezzino is the second in the Healthy Kansans series and sets the stage for understanding the concern that Kansas has slipped considerably in the nationwide rankings of health in the states over the last 30 years. His explanation of how the rankings work and why they are important is clear and understandable. Pezzino stated, "In the end, I became more and more convinced that the important thing was not the numbers. It was the communication that we could build around those numbers." His discussion of the social determinants of health is Show Moreimportant to understanding the rankings. He recalls a controversy covered by the local newspaper that quoted the county commissioner saying, "What does education have to do with health.?" He used that as a opportunity to begin a community conversation about those linkages. As an epidemiologist, Dr. Pezzino has played many roles in health policy in Kansas - from the local health officer to state policy maker. He recounts the stresses of being the county health officer during COVID and comments that the "social contract has been broken." He comments that there is still value in providing accurate data as a public health person but now a lot of the authority has been moved from public health officers to local elected officials. That has created a tension between individual rights and the social good. Show Less
Interview of Robert St.Peter, January 23, 2026
Interviewed by Jim McLean
This is the opening interview for the series, Healthy Kansans. Since Bob St. Peter will be interviewing all the rest of the participants in this series, Jim McLean wanted to use this interview to establish his expertise. St. Peter was the first President and CEO of the Kansas Health Institute; he stayed for 24 years, developing and expanding their services in Kansas. Prior to that he had extensive experience in Washington DC with health policy [see his biography]. For this series of interviews, St. Peter defines health in the broadest terms and points out Show Morewhy the health rankings are valuable information for policy makers. The Kansas Health Foundation which created KHI really wanted the KHI to look at a broad set of issues that influenced how healthy we are as a city, as a county, as a state, and how education or housing, transportation influenced a person's health. St. Peter pointed out that health in Kansas isn't getting worse. People in Kansas are living longer, generally experiencing lower rates of cardiovascular disease, stroke, etc. So, it is not that our collective health is getting worse; it is that our relative standing compared to other states is getting worse. Other states are doing better, faster than Kansas in improving the health outcomes for their citizens that Kansas should be working on as well. Show Less