comic commissioner for twenty two years that's that's dedication it is that's a long time and if anybody understands washington county i think i think you do think you know over those years you certainly have met a lot of people and and have worked through a lot of situations that occur in this county that we live in and one of your focuses is on wellness yes so you were quite involved in this program that you call the washington county wellness program yes can you tell us about about this and that over time when two thousand and six we decided that we needed to take more of a proactive role in our employees health so we began with a program where we brought washington hospital and hospital in and they did a number of things blood work for cholesterol triglycerides glucose numbers and they did blood pressure body mass index and the employees would fill out these questionnaires that dealt with stress and your family history for illnesses and you would put all this together it would go into a computer system and then it would give you your your age versus your your your physical wage versus your quite a large part a logical wage and that it would give you suggestions on how to improve your it was an eye opener because we had people that came out of this initially that were shocked to see that their physical wage was ten plus years more than their chronological age so we started designing programs to assist our employees with a better age for their health and i will tell you we had one employee the very first time we did this we had one employee that immediately was told you have to get to a cardiologist meet these numbers really bad you need to be checked and he ended up within days having open heart surgery he credited our wellness program with saving his life and you know we've continued to grow this program over the years we started in two thousand and six so  you do this by educating everybody we do in the don'ts and this should benefit it's a lot like that and it's even deeper than that so we have a dedicated employee who is the director of our wellness program and we kick off the beginning each year of our wellness program now i'm on valley hospital comes in and they do a thirty seven multi phase sick test blood work done and again the employees go in through highmark with highmark insurance and they go into highmark system and answer a whole lot of questions in put this information and it gives them their score and their peer average score and then we receive collective information about our group back from high mark and then we design programs around assisting with the health issues of employees so for instance we know that nutrition is a huge issue we provide at no cost one on one nutritional counseling we frequently provide seminars on cooking and geared towards nutrition we've done diabetes prevention we do smoking cessation classes we do monthly blood pressure checks for individuals we have had the biggest loser contests we do the walking challenge the ten thousand steps challenge and it usually lasts over a period of ten weeks and departments compete against each other and we make it very competitive we offer a lot of prizes for participation and we just we do so much the smoking cessation i think it's been one of the best programs that we've offered to the employees but we do breast cancer awareness month in october and we have health fairs that take place in our public meeting rooms where we have vendors come in and offer information on all sorts of wellness programs that are out there we do a a reduced fee at the cameron wellness center if individuals want to join the center  we do heart health a lot on heart health we've seen stress is a huge issue for a lot of our employees and probably because they work in public service it can be very stressful especially agencies like children  services and public safety you know the people who are answering those phones going and those homes it's it's pretty challenging how many employers are we talking about well since we recently sold our nursing home or down now to just over seven hundred employees that we offer these services to and we've seen a reduction in usage of chronic conditions that have been able to be avoided or improved because of participation in the program and with all the things that we offer we do we call it a report card it's a score card so for every activity you participate in that the county provides and even for things you might participate in the county is not directly providing you get scored numbers for participation and you can receive at the end of the year at the end of the program an additional two hundred fifty dollars in paycheck well so we of but the increases that we've received are not as high as the number of other businesses that we've compared to we also highmark came in and provided monies that we were able to offer to different departments and allow them to put some fitness tools in their departments so you might see an individual sitting on an ability ball you might see some hand weights that they're doing it's their desk so we've really tried to encourage a lot of different activities we have activities that take place at lunchtime or immediately after work everything from line dancing to kickboxing to zoom we've had a whole array of fitness tools that we've used is all funded how we have funded it largely began through highmark offered incentive funding and then it's a very small amount it's under it's right around i think now at one hundred thousand dollars with page year which  savings far exceeds what would be seeing in rate increases if we did not provide this program two years ago we expanded it to financial wellness knowing that so many individuals have a lot of stress when it comes to finances and so we bring in the financial coach teach people basically financial literacy programs that they can go through to understand more about their finances put it banding pla together to take control of their finances so we've seen that is been very popular as well nobody ever teaches us the little i love old people that well you know twenty three years as a county commissioner you supine yes and then actually increasing productivity it does all of that that you know there's no downside to having a robust wellness program we received an award from the governor several years back for awhile this program we've done so much we've been very competitive with what we do i think the next step and i haven't gotten the support for this but the next step i think to consider are wellness days so when you hit fifty stime for a someone decides to do that you know they miss a day work maybe we should have a few well hours that individuals can take to encourage them to go for their annual physical to get that mammogram and you know to get that b or whatever other tests they need to have that might be the next step because what we see is so oftentimes we have a younger workforce that are saving their sick days for when their children are sick and they need to be with them so sometimes they're avoiding using that time so we had committed well hours that could be allocated specifically for proactive doctor visits and testing that may also provide a for further incentive so demanded the employees to be involved those programs now it's elective it's an elective program or participation rate unfortunately is about twenty four percent which we're told is good but if we could get to fifty percent i would just be elated if we could get that high with the employees one thing we've talked about looked at haven't moved forward with that yet are the treadmill desks where you don't have to if you see me yes i have because we have a lot as apartments where zambo i t information technology is sedentary lifestyle and if people can just move a little bit you know that helps them a great deal you will see a lot more people taking the stairs now than you used to and i love when i'm on the first floor take up to the seventh floor you always take the stairs i never take the elevator and i been amazed at how many people i run into in the stairwell with even five years ago that wasn't the case  even just sitting at the if you have a saddam job at your desk even just going up every so often standing up is beneficial that's exactly right there and i use the apple watch and it reminds you when you've been sitting th you know that's the threshold you need to have ten thousand steps a day we hand out the pedometers for people to track their steps we've competed in corporate walking challenges we've had lunch time walking tours through the city of washington to encourage employees to come out get out of the office we will in the within the next year be doing improvements on our courthouse annex building and we had a design recently presented to us that gives us kind of a walking track around our building to further encourage employees to get out and move around and walk a little bit and some outdoor  tables that they could actually go outside for some sunshine to conduct a meeting lunch time so we're trying to you know think in a broader sense of what can we do to improve the health of our employees which cuts down on sick time and it reduces health care costs it provides a happier environment for the employees and it's just it's a win win win how many commercials are there are there are three of us three of us yeah and everyone participates in the commissioner or jogging in christian or larry magid likes to take his six year old granddaughter and and she'll do the two mile races even she's done five days with him so you'll see all of us participating is this happening in other counties as well  it's in a few counties it's not in as many counties is as it should be in my opinion just because it's the right thing to do and it reduce your overall costs and it it's a very small expenditure for you know the benefit you see financially we encouraged a lot of other counties to to start a program like this washing county's been so successful we've had other businesses when they hear about our program that they ask and we provide the information with them on how we've been able to be successful washing cars cars kind of a unique county that you know i i sit on the board for the drug and alcohol yes thank you for doing that we always thought i would tell you it's been a wonderful learning experience for them i'm happy to be involved with  wonderful group of people oh you know some some of these commissions and boards talk and these people do and i like that aspect of it but they're becoming the model for other counties as well so washington always seems to have  going on here we really do i think that washington county has an innovative spirit and we try to be a leader in trying new things trying to find solutions to problems and just improve the lives of the people that we serve and that's our job is to make the lives of the people we serve that are in some way deliver the services that we're required to deliver to them so they have a better quality of life and they want to live work and raise their families right here in washington county is there a chance of this program to and could help educate the general population in the average person get involved and we'd be happy to do that we're very proud of our wellness program and it was started as i said in two thousand and six and i can tell you now i'm a little bit of a of a nerd you might know that about me and i have a spreadsheet where i have the basic information on a spreadsheet year to year the cholesterol glucose very good derived my scores i keep track of that and i'm have to take responsibility for your health my mother as i grew up was was always ill never healthy and i got to this point where i had one of the aha moments in my life when i was suffering from tremendous migraines and vertigo and i said i'm not going to live like this and so i hired a trainer who was also verse nutrition and she worked with me for several years i stayed on that path when i hit forty years old and you know now fifty five and since i turned forty i have always been in a very regimented fitness nature fitness routine routine because i see the health benefits of it you know we have a director that  could have died was taken to the hospital glucose number was over six hundred started walking doing great so we can look to a lot of people who've really changed their lives with nutrition and fitness just looking at everything towards wellness on top of all of this you're involved with veterans yes and i love that aspect too you were also doing a thing with veterans and service dogs which i will talk to you about at some point in time we haven't discussed this but tell us about your involvement with veterans well i'm married to a gentleman who's serving in your forty one of the armed forces he was a marine for twelve years and when army reserves he's  retired state police but i've been through four mobilizations with him he said seven mobilizations and fourteen years as a reservist and i just have a heart for veterans and so i started running more long distance i hadn't done anything more than about a five k and to oil november of two thousand and sixteen i ran my first half marathon i raise money for washing city mission women and children shelter well then they started this new project for homeless veterans shelter it's called patriot house it's a twenty two bed facility for honorably discharged homeless veterans and i don't know if you know this but that are twice as likely to suffer from substance use disorder twice as likely to be homeless and so they're really stepping up for the community they're not government funded private donations and so i ran my first full marathon last mayor in pittsburgh and training is something else for a marathon and raise money for the veteran shelter and then in january i again stepped up i ran what's called the goofy challenge in disney world i ran a half marathon saturday the four marathon sunday so i've raised around one hundred thousand dollars now for the city mission it's incredible so this is being built we're right in the city of washington is called patriot house it will be opening and i have the date i think it's  gotten to know a young hero marine from uniontown and he's actually hoping to move into peter's township or open he's going to be a resident here who served in iraq came home safe went to afghanistan his sergeant stepped on an i e d leg came off he went in to get him to save him and he stepped on an i e d he lost one leg at the hip one at the knee both lungs collapse broken back both arms broken and temporarily blinded and he is survived he's twenty years old brandon rumbaugh he's a true american hero and is somebody that has the most positive outlook on life you would ever ever imagine and he just said a national bench pressing record last spring yeah he's tremendously and he has a sick dog he had some security issues so he has a dog himself the strain specifically for him through the veterans program they supplied this dog for him sam and sam's a tremendous dog awesome not going to give up information but we're doing it because it's all in the works being put together but we're going to be having a van and we're going to there's an organization in florida that trains dogs across a twenty thousand dollars a dog and supplies and freedom veterans so we're going to be part of the mix of bringing the dog here and they're hoping to build a facility in greensburg five there right now because my children bring theirs over but there's nothing more therapeutic or relaxing in my opinion than any animal and isn't it amazing the bond between human and animal when there's no real verbal understanding of what you're saying in this bond that's created you know there i think they make a mental connection yes i agree and they they do begin to understand you know what you're saying and how you're saying you understand and interpret them as well as my experience i've got one that doesn't understand know yet well that you know sometimes adults can control you  know there's a tremendous bond between p on animals and you know that's that's a wonderful thing so you know we're not a political show diana but you know sometimes you just cannot not be political you know when  see some injustices and so forth but i would like you to take the opportunity you're doing something that's that's really stepping away from what you're custom to doing but you're taking what you're doing on a broader scope i am so last spring been involved in this campaign and in january he asked me to run for lieutenant governor he's running me so that's what i'm doing right now and you know when he told me why he wanted me to step up it was about the great success we've had  washington county the experience i have on the county level actually knowing how state programs and mandates and legislation impacts people on a very personal level because we are the we are the entity that delivers the services that the state mandates and so we see the impact so he asked me to step up in the storm in the race so so you know i watch politics sometimes you know and you see some people do what i call career politicians and they're just looking at where they can step up step up and step up you've been working for this county for twenty three years yes to benefit this county not the been for diana the way i see and knowing you over these years well you have you're having a wonderful opportunity to do that for the whole state so so tell us tell us what it means to be a lieutenant governor i'm not even sure what it means to be trying to govern well if you look at the law is number one if the governor cannot fulfill their duties she stepped in but you are the chairman of the senate president of the senate you conduct the meetings you are the chairman of the probation parole board and then you also chairman of public safety in addition and one palming go approached me he would see the governor's role as that as a c e o that would go out and sell the products of pennsylvania bringing businesses in the pennsylvania and the role of the lieutenant governor will be the chief operating officer actually putting in the plan in the process the plans that we collectively bring together and so it would be wonderful to have an opportunity to replicate some of the successes we've had here washing recruited to run the first time anytime i've run i've been recruited to run really because of my commitment to the community how active i've been in the community and i you know i think we all have a responsibility to try to make our community better and and just as i've expanded the role of commissioners i do so much in the community you know i see that if i were to become lieutenant governor to expand that role to really make a difference in more than just what's on ensure in the gar i've been all over pennsylvania and you know we all want to same thing people want to be able to have some security about the future of the commonwealth they want to be able to know that crime is under control it's being dealt with people are very concerned about the opioid crisis which is a huge health risk which also you know we have hepatitis and hiv on the rise from that we have all these things and whatever you can to support that that's correct so the crime rate you know has been impacted up to eighty percent of individuals who commit crimes are under the influence of something another aspect right now is around eleven percent of all newborn babies are born in clinical active dependency and washing county eleven percent but if you talk to the docs they'll tell you it's more like twenty five percent that the mother has disclosed that the infant shows some signs of a ddiction so then you have a lot of children that are being removed from the home it's again it's almost eighty percent of children move from the home parents have substance use disorder in the home other issues too but we see that and you know these children are growing up thinking this is normal higher propensity of them to lead the same lifestyle just so we really have to address this it's a public health issue you know this program that you're involved in with the with the wellness for washington county certainly going to help you as you're putting the