New wellness center to open for Franklin County law enforcement officers

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) -- The Franklin County Sheriff’s Office along with the Ohio State University announced the opening of a new wellness center. It’s designed to address both the physical and mental needs of law enforcement officers.

The equipment in the space is part of a vision to better the officers physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing so they can be their best on and off duty. “Look, statistically, we only live about 18 months after retirement. So when we can look at some of these acute problems now and work on them, then we can push that out so we have a longer, healthier work ethic,” said FCSO Deputy Sheriff Josh Walters. 

Leaders say that this facility represents a major step forward in providing comprehensive wellness support to deputies and recruits. “Just having that overall benefit of health, mentally, physically, it makes me a bigger asset to my colleagues and my community,” said Walters. 

Deputies within the FCSO have been utilizing the space for months. They say they’ve noticed an improvement already. “I had kind of an injury while I was working out for some of our PT training and when I wasn't able to do some of the important functions of my job, I came down and saw one of the trainers. She did some cupping and my lat area, and my shoulder was like brand new,” said Walters. 

“Everything in that wellness center has made my body better and with that I can perform better, we can perform at a higher level and make everybody safer,” said FSCO Deputy Vincent Derose.

The key features of the wellness center include an athletic training injury care, cold plunge, a sauna, dry float bed, and hot/cold compression therapy. “We got different pieces of equipment that we knew would help them in different things that become stress during law enforcement work,” said Dr. Nathan Edwards, a research scientist with the Human Performance Collaborative at OSU.

Dr. Edwards says that this was molded after what they see in athletics. “We saw what was available at Ohio State to the athletes and said, okay, let's take a version of that that applies in the law enforcement and let's make it context specific and work towards those similar goals,” said Edwards. 

Leaders say that they are just scratching the surface with this space. Future plans include expanding this into other local law enforcement agencies and across the state as well.