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Community Hospital Anderson
Honoree, Community Achievement in Health Care
Many years ago, Michelle Cook and Betsy Welsh, staff members at Community Hospital Anderson, asked to establish an employee garden on the campus. Little did they know they were planting the seeds for a full-fledged farm that would yield 30,000 pounds of produce a year for the county’s food pantries.
Two plots eventually became 24. Dr. Preetham Jetty, cardiology department chief and medical director of the Madison County area for Community Heart and Vascular, could see the vegetable patches from his office. He became a champion of the project.
In 2018, the hospital’s foundation had the idea to grow the garden into a resource for Madison County residents. In 2022, it poured $2.5 million into the Community Farm, expanding plantings to three acres, building The Jetty Center demonstration kitchen and a greenhouse, adding beehives and fruit trees, and hiring a full-time farmer, Mikkal Hodge. It’s the first hospital in Indiana with an in-ground farm on its premises. The farm addresses the county’s food-insecurity problem, which ranks as 12th-worst of the state’s 92 counties. About 65% of the produce is donated to food pantries, and some is used by the hospital’s kitchen staff. Harvested honey sells out at the gift shop.
Cooking classes are held in the high-tech demonstration kitchen with a capacity for 100 people. It’s outfitted with a closed-circuit camera system and multiple TV screens so everyone can see what the chef is doing from any seat.
The vision for the farm followed the foundation’s commitment to three I’s: imagination, inspiration and impact. Cook and Welsh imagined an employee perk that inspired a scaled-up version with a community-wide impact through free, healthful produce and nutritional education.
“The idea is to take care of the community’s health needs so they don’t have to be in the hospital in the first place,” said Tom Bannon, the hospital’s vice president of community engagement and chief foundation officer. “Community Hospital Anderson recognizes that enhancing health and well-being means more than simply delivering exceptional health care. It includes tackling social determinants of health such as food insecurity.”
Bannon said the local foundation’s nimbleness made the project a reality. “We’re able to make decisions pretty quickly,” he said, adding that when construction costs increased during the pandemic, the foundation’s commitment to the farm didn’t waver. The foundation funds all of the farm’s expenses, and Hodge is a hospital employee, alleviating the HR burden on the foundation.
Since the ribbon-cutting on the Jetty Center in September, Anderson residents have been drawn to the amenity. Teachers have inquired about lunch-and-learn field trips, and the hospital’s cancer center envisions yoga classes and other holistic community programming. The community ownership is responding to the farm’s homegrown pedigree, Bannon said.
“Almost the entire project was done with local businesses, from the general contractor to the architect to the electrical contractor, the plumber, and the place where we bought office furniture,” he said. “It’s all Madison County.”•
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