Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Workforce Wellness topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
School district highlights community wellness fair, data linking mental-health support to staff retention
Summary
School City of Mishawaka reported growth of its "1 Day in the Sun" wellness fair and shared Hoosier Well-Being data showing counseling correlates with lower staff turnover for employees with mental-health conditions.
School City of Mishawaka staff reported June 11 that the district's "1 Day in the Sun" community wellness fair has grown since it began in 2021 and presented aggregated insurance-data analysis showing mental-health supports correlate with lower staff turnover.
Miss Saunders, the district's wellness lead, described the mental-health fair's growth: the first event on June 19, 2021, had about 27 community partners, roughly 200 free meals and about 300 attendees; the most recent fair drew about 31 partners, 400 meals and approximately 500 attendees. Saunders noted the event is designed to be welcoming to families and to include partner booths with a bingo-board incentive that drew long lines.
On employee wellness, the district shared results from the Hoosier Well-Being data project conducted by the Wellness Council of Indiana, which analyzed fully de-identified claims data for 2023 and 2024. Saunders told the board that mental-health claims represented roughly 3% of claims costs but accounted for a disproportionately large share of turnover patterns: the district's six-month turnover rate for employees without identified mental-health conditions was 3.9%, while turnover associated with all mental-health conditions was 13.7% and 20% for substance-abuse diagnoses in the same measurement window.
Saunders highlighted a comparison for employees who received counseling versus those who did not: for certain mental-health conditions described in the presentation, employees who had counseling showed 0% turnover in the six-month follow-up window versus 14.3% for those without counseling; for depression, turnover was 11.3% with counseling and 15.1% without counseling; for substance abuse the reported six-month turnover was 0% with counseling versus 50% without counseling.
District leaders said these findings support continued investment in on-site preventive services (mobile mammograms, flu shots, lab work) and programs to increase access to counseling and other supports.
