OZH WELLNESS
STRENGTHENING
Body, Mind and Spirit
BY DWAIN HEBDA E
very time Sarah James finds herself in the shiny-new Employee Wellness Center at Ozarks Healthcare — which is often — it does her heart good knowing the one-year-old workout facility is doing the same (literally) for the company’s many employees.
“The last two years, for everybody, have been ex-
tremely stressful,” she said. “I think a lot of people lost some control over their lives when we were all limited in what we could do and where we could go. “Everybody knows exercise is just awesome, not
only for weight loss and diabetes and heart care, but it’s important for your mental health as well as your mood and energy. We all need to connect to something, and this kind of gave our cowork- ers something healthy to cling to and process what was going on.” The center, which opened last May, is the first offering of its kind by the healthcare system, repur- posing some extra square footage into a 24/7 work- out space that’s free to employees. It’s also available
to employee spouses for a small monthly fee, ev- ery penny of which is given directly to the Ozarks Healthcare Foundation to help purchase a mobile mammography unit. James, whose day job is as director of Ozarks
Healthcare’s Therapies Department, said once the center opened, it didn’t take long to start at- tracting a steady clientele of both regular workout junkies and beginners alike, creating new friend- ships among employees. “It was cool to see people who never had been to
the gym before, who thought, ‘Well, I might as well try it out,’” she said. “You saw groups of people who didn’t normally know each other form friendships as they were going to the gym together. It was really a
Opposite Page: Sarah James, the director of Ozarks Healthcare Therapies Department. Photography by Jason Masters.
36 | OZARKS HEALTHCARE | SUMMER 2022
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