Primary Care Champion: Louise Probst

Louise Probst has served more than two decades at the St. Louis Area Business Health Coalition, where she’s worked with local employers to find new ways to deliver high-quality, comprehensive primary care to workers.

This month, the Primary Care Collaborative is thrilled to honor Louise Probst, the soon-to-be-retired Executive Director of the St. Louis Area Business Health Coalition, as its Primary Care Champion.

Probst has spent more than two decades with the St. Louis Area Business Health Coalition and has supported multiple efforts to improve access to and quality of care for local workforces.

“I believe that everybody deserves a trusted and continuous relationship with a primary care clinician that truly knows and understands them,” said Probst, explaining her decades-long commitment to advancing primary care. “I really believe… that advancing primary care is… one of the foundational things that we need to do to really put our health system on a better path.”

Probst emphasized that, while policy needs to play a central role in strengthening primary care, employers need to step up and play a part in efforts to strengthen primary care.

“It’s the purchasers, the consumers that sort of shape [a] market and say what they want,” explained Probst. “And so, if the system’s not… organizing itself in that way, then I think the purchasers need to step in and let their interest be known.”

Probst also stressed that effective primary care needs to take a holistic approach to health – and, ideally, should include a large focus on lifestyle.

Finally, Probst stressed the importance of placing primary care of the American health care system.

“We need to elevate the role and the recognition and the leadership of primary care across the entire system."