Listen to former President Bill Clinton discuss his involvement at the Humana Challenge, and it can be difficult to figure out which he’s more excited about, the health care conference he hosts or the PGA Tour golf event.
“I loved it and I really thought it went well. It was just terrific,” Clinton said of his first involvement in the Humana Challenge in partnership with the William J. Clinton Foundation last year. “I am really excited about this year. We’ve got another good field coming back. We’ve got the PGA supporting us in having this health conference in advance of the tournament. It is going to be even better this year than it was last year.”
Clinton’s enthusiasm for the message of health and wellness and his love of golf and the PGA Tour were among the reasons the PGA Tour’s Coachella Valley stop experienced a revival in 2012. As he returns to host the Health Matters conference Tuesday and to serve as unofficial host of the golf tournament, Clinton sees bigger things for both events in the coming years.
“We committed to do this for eight years. Who knows, after eight years they may want us all to stay on,” Clinton said in an exclusive interview with The Desert Sun. “Maybe they won’t need us then. But I think in these eight years, we can have a measurable impact on the trajectory of the country’s health.”
It is the partnership with healthcare provider Humana and the PGA Tour that brought Clinton to the desert golf event last year, 17 years after he famously played one round in the 1995 tournament while he was still president. The partnership wanted to use the tournament to talk about healthcare issues including childhood obesity, healthcare costs and preventative measures to help an aging American population. While the first year was about discussing ideas, Clinton believes the second year will feature more tangible evidence of action, not just words.
“I think it will get better as we go along. I do. And what I am trying to do is to not just make it a no message but make it a yes message,” Clinton said. “Your life will be more fun if you stay healthier and your work will be better, your family life will be better. It will all be better.”
One sign that the inaugural Health Matters conference did have an impact is that the Clinton Foundation itself rolled out a Health Matters initiative in November. Valerie Alexander, director of marketing and communications for the Clinton Foundation, said the national initiative can be traced directly back to Humana Challenge week in 2012.
“What we realized was that essentially our foundation was only addressing one chunk of our big health care cost problem, which was the childhood obesity issue. And that we ought to have a health initiative that dealt with the adult population, especially with people who are getting older, who we want to encourage to go play more golf,” Clinton said. “We want to get more golf rounds in and anything else that will make them healthier. So we decided that we would establish an entire initiative on this that deals with everything from healthier lifestyles to trying to tackle this terrible problem of younger adults overdosing on painkillers and all kinds of things in between.”
But as easily as Clinton can discuss health care statistics, he just as easily talks about the golf tournament and how the event attracted a stronger field in 2012 than in some previous years.
“We changed the format and made it easier on the pros, I think,” Clinton said. “So they could play a serious tournament and still do the pro-am thing but do it in a more restrictive way and have two amateurs and two pros (in a group) and they could actually concentrate on their round. We also have a lot of really good amateur players in this field who will play well as well as attract some attention.”
Clinton said in recent weeks he has met with golf stars Phil Mickelson and Mark Wilson and their wives to discuss the tournament. Wilson, who went on to win the 2012 tournament, remembers being impressed with Clinton’s level of participation last year.
“My wife, Amy, and I were fortunate enough on Wednesday last year to be able to get to know (Clinton) in a pretty quiet setting. About 20 of the tour players got to meet him and it was neat to see how excited all of the players were. We don’t get excited about too many things, maybe Augusta National, stuff like that, but when we were all getting ready and wondering when he was going to come in the room, everybody was really giddy about it.”
Even after Wilson won the tournament, Clinton was part of the experience.
“I even got a voice mail from him the next day saying, sorry I had to get out from the tournament, but I want to congratulate you on a job well done and I think the tournament was great,” Wilson said. “And I managed to put that into my iTunes library and so every once in awhile when I’m working out, I put it on shuffle and it goes from Eric Clapton to Bill Clinton.”
Clinton said one of the biggest issues in health is that 20 percent of Americans consume 80 percent of health care in the country. He knows from personal experience how health issues can suddenly find anyone.
“I was healthy as a horse my whole life and then I had the heart incident in 2004 and then I had to go in for a second corrective surgery in 2005,” Clinton recalled. “And we know that. But we also know that if we play the odds we can be a lot healthier.”
Clinton believes there is a direct link between the message of health and wellness and the game of golf, and that in some ways the Humana Challenge might be serving both causes.
“The economy had something to do with the number of golf rounds dropping (in recent years). But there are more public courses where ordinary folks can play and I hope that in a larger sense this whole thing that we are doing will both help the health of America and incidentally help golf,” Clinton said. “I never will forget watching Gene Sarazen in his 90s hit the opening ball at the Masters. It was a big thrill for me, and there is no question that his cardiovascular health was better because he kept playing golf.”
Clinton also was excited about being involved in the tournament because of his friendship with the long-time tournament host, Bob Hope.
“Mike McCallister (chairman of Humana), I talked to him when he agreed to do this and we wanted to do this health initiative,” Clinton said. “He agreed that we should never allow (Hope’s) memory to be extinguished. It’s personally important to me.”