Revolutionizing police wellness: Glen Alpine officers launch 'Welcome Home'

“They wear body armor for protection as they respond to people’s worst moments of their lives and that armor keeps anything from getting in and hurting us, but it also keeps anything from getting out,” said Greg Snider, Glen Alpine Sergeant Major. “We guard ourselves. There are currently no accessible ways for police officers to process what’s stored in their bodies.”

The physical, mental, and emotional toll on police officers is considerable. Consider the following statistics.

• The World Health Organization released data that an average person will experience one to two critical incidences in their lifetime. A career police officer, however, will experience 600 to 800 critical incidences in their 20- to 30-year career.

• The average life expectancy for a police officer is 53 years old (versus 74 and 79 years for U.S. men and women, respectively). 

• A police officer lives, on average, two years after retirement.

• The police officer is 21 times more likely to die from cardiovascular disease-related illnesses than at the hands of a violent offender. 

“The unforgiven health outcomes of this career costs in longevity come from the negative lifestyle changes brought on by rotational shifts, lack and loss of sleep, poor eating habits, cumulative stress, physical inactivity, hypervigilance roller coaster, cardiovascular disease, poor self-coping mechanisms, financial insecurity, constant threat of physical harm, loss of trust, and loss of hope in society,” Snider said.

Officer Lara Dopp said she first began questioning resources for officers early in her law enforcement career. She went to Snider, her mentor and PT instructor at Basic Law Enforcement Training, asking what could be done to stem the negative health outcomes for those who protect North Carolina communities.

With no comprehensive program available, the two began to build what is now called Welcome Home. The approach offers officers tools in nine separate pathways, such as financial, personal relationships, and traumatic experiences, that can be tailored to meet an officer’s individual needs. 

Welcome Home is being piloted this year inside the policing agencies in eight counties: Burke, Caldwell, Catawba, Watauga, Avery, Mitchell, Yancey, and Madison.

Each agency will train two people, called Navigators, in how to implement the program inside their agencies. The program focuses on serving rural agencies that do not have the resources available in law enforcement departments in urban communities.

“Our program is a pilot for a larger concept,” Dopp said. “We saw a need inside our agencies and we went out looking for answers. And while we were out looking for answers, we built relationships with Appalachian State and the Health Department. …  We’ve spent the last several years building and networking with resources inside North Carolina, one of which is the N.C. Community Health Worker Association (NCCHWA).”

The agencies’ Navigators are also eligible for additional credentialing through NCCHWA’s legacy track. Snider and Dopp are the first two law enforcement officers in the state to be credentialed community health care workers.

The state now recognizes NCCHWA for credentialing on a state level, which gives them health system codes to bill services to insurance. 

“(The Navigators) are from the agency, so they are from inside the community. They are inside the culture already,” Snider said.

He stressed that the officers - not the administration or command staff - choose who will be that agency’s trained Navigators. 

“We want the community to pick who this person is to represent this community,” he said.

The pilot will also focus on integrating evidence-based, officer-centered practices of a community health worker, the Navigator, into agencies. 

“This involves identifying the existing community champions inside our agencies and empowering them with practical and realistic tools they can use to support officers amidst the social and political complexities of today and North Carolina Senate Bill 300,” said Snider. Among the bill’s provisions is to require all law enforcement agencies to implement early intervention mechanisms to identify and correct officers who use excessive force or other misconduct. 

“Our overall objective is to authentically document the ethnography of rural North Carolina police and bridge the gap between prior research findings and the effective incorporation of evidence-based practices into the realities of rural policing settings,” he said.

Better health outcomes for police officers is the goal of the program, but it won’t be only the people wearing a badge who will benefit.

“The program will put (officers) in a position to make the right decision,” Snider said, leading to decreased reliance on force in situations. 

“We want to humanize the badge and the citizens.”

Angela Kuper Copeland is managing editor of The Paper. She may be reached at 828-445-8595 or via email at angela@thepaper.media.