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Spotlight Series- Angelina Drews

Posted on , updated on by rlmccoy

To tell the story of Angelina Drews’ journey into health coaching is to tell a story about personal challenges and the woman who overcame them.

Like so many others – family health concerns and work upsets moved her life course  in directions she hadn’t originally planned.

Angelina loved being a busy nurse on call 24/7 for most of her career. She has been fortunate to work at High Point Regional Hospital serving in different roles over the years as a Trauma Coordinator, and later as an Infection Prevention Manager. Then, an Aunt became ill. Without a blink, Angelina’s deep caring nature and family values kicked in and she struggled to balance her full-time work and with full-time care of her aunt’s worsening condition. However, in June 2016, Angelina resigned her position because she realized she could do both, but not do both with her full attention and passion at the same time. Within months, Angelina’s aunt passed away.  

Angelina began looking at her employment options and considered Health Coaching because of its holistic focus.  Additionally she felt that through Health coaching there she would have the opportunity to truly help a client make impactful, lifelong changes.  She completed the UNCG 3-day training course in September 2016 and began her buddy coaching right away.

And again, life changed course.

Just as Angelina was gaining traction, she ruptured a disk in her back, delaying the certification process until June of 2017. During the buddy coaching process, she had to learn about switching “hats”. She noticed she was “shoulding” during buddy coaching, and instead of guiding as a coach, she was telling them what they “should” do (as nurses are accustomed to doing in patient education). Once she realized this, she learned to better “work the process,” as she says.

After healing and recovery, Angelina became certified in June 2017. Initially, Angelina applied for health coaching jobs while providing private coaching on the side. When she didn’t find a job in coaching at a company that had the focus she sought, she took it as a sign to work within her own business.  Angelina managed to secure an internship with successful coach Merikay Hunt, owner of CoachMKay Companies. Merikay has been in integral part of Angelina beginning and growing her own health coaching business.She has been exclusively focusing on her business, NDAPartners, LLC, since January 2018.

“Health Coaching gives me the opportunity to feel a sense of satisfaction in making a difference.  Having my own business allows for empowerment in being able to set my own course.”

Angelina  has found coaching to be very fulfilling and enjoys the the unpredictability of the client-led sessions.  Angelina typically works with people wanting to make lifestyle changes. Coaching is a process. Life is a process. And this  long time adrenaline junkie who spent much of her career in the Emergency Department is strapped in and ready to roll with her clients.

Spotlight – Mary McGuire

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Mary McGuire – “You can’t really do any wrong, no matter where the client is, they will get something out of it.”

With more and more health disparities at her job as a researcher, Mary McGuire decided she wanted to focus more on the community and promoting health. This is how she found the Masters of Public Health program at UNCG. She said, “it felt like the right thing to do”. There was a lot of buzz around health coaching when she was at UNCG in 2013-14, so she decided to take the health coaching class over the summer. “I loved the process, I loved the one-on-one connection, and I loved the progress that people made with big or small goals!”

Mary currently works for ActiveHealth Management, a division of Aetna. Her company has changed from individual, in-person health coaching to an online group coaching process, although employees will still have the opportunity to participate in individual coaching.

Mary says that health coaching is very broad. You can find a job that fits what you want to do. While the foundations of health coaching stay the same, the setting can be very different. She finds that many people do not understand what health coaching is yet. Sometimes, Mary finds it difficult to explain because “it depends on the client what you do”.

She finds health coaching to be important because “it is such a big part of preventative care, even if someone already has a condition. Doctors will tell you to do XYZ, but health coaching adds the extra piece to enhance your journey to health and wellbeing”. Mary can touch on things clients may not have even realized were barriers. Health coaching can “open doors that weren’t there before and create the alliance”.

The main takeaway Mary has from health coaching is that “you can’t really do anything wrong. No matter where the client is, they will get something out of it, and I’m glad to be a part of that”.

February/March Health Coach Training- Reflection from a Facilitator

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Participating in the UNCG Health Coaching training was a great experience! When I was invited to join the team, I was truly humbled. Although the commitment seemed initially daunting, I was thankful for my colleagues’ vote in confidence and extending this wonderful opportunity to join such a talented team of individuals. Having the opportunity to observe two full trainings certainly helped increase my confidence in fulfilling this role as a co-facilitator. Not to mention, planning meetings, e-mails and the meticulous organization of the curriculum content which made navigating and preparing for training more feasible.

What is amazing to witness is that the health coaching team operates in a health coaching spirit. Zeal, optimism and enthusiasm are a few words to describe the health coaching teams’ approach to training. During the training, the team provided support and encouragement each day which played a major role in my competence as a co-facilitator. I felt genuinely welcomed and supported from day one. The team provided opportunities for preparation and discussion between sessions, which made leading as a co-facilitator even more achievable.

After co-facilitating a few sections, I discovered facilitating became more natural than I expected. However, I did discover some concepts were more difficult to conceptualize for some; as many participants have been trained and socialized to think and approach their clients’ needs in a certain way. In these instances, the tag team approach from the health coaching team guaranteed that all content was not only covered but conveyed clearly – which was certainly reassuring!

Although I attribute most of my competence to team preparation and support, gaining practical experience coaching weekly at Wake Forest University helped tremendously. Having the opportunity to share practical experiences, utilize real-life client examples and sharing lessons learned with the participants allowed the training content easier to absorb for participants. Facilitating discussion with an engaged audience who desired to learn how to successfully master the art of health coaching certainly made co-facilitating more rewarding, too.

Overall, I learned that during trainings it is important to be confident in my practical knowledge, recognize that co-facilitating is a team effort, and modeling the health coaching spirit. I’ve also learned it is essential to employ health coaching traits while engaging with participants. This is important since there may be a few who ask various types of questions, provide challenging responses, and may even illustrate lack of interest in the training. However, the more enthusiastic and patient I am as a co-facilitator, the more responsive, dedicated and engaged the participants will be during the trainings.  

As I prepare for upcoming trainings this summer, I look forward to my continued growth as a certified health coach, learning innovative ways to present training information and continuing to propel the excitement of our participants as they begin their journey of becoming a certified health coach!

Your Ally,

Crystal Dixon, MPH, MCHES, CHC

Emily Medlin “They are like a flower, you pick the petals back”

Posted on , updated on by rlmccoy

What do you get when you mix a mother of one, a dog lover, an avid music fan, and a health coach? You get Emily Medlin, certified health coach with WakeMed Health and Hospitals.

She was trained at UNCG’s Health Coaching Program during April 2017, however her coaching journey began before that at WakeMed. Emily’s background in Exercise Physiology gave her a good stepping stone into the health coaching world, but she had not been formally trained or certified. She was using this skill set in the workplace, and wanted to continue to grow that into an education based certification program.

She found UNCG to be a perfect fit for her needs and the growing needs of the hospital. She is currently the lead certified health coach working in Corporate & Community Health. Emily typically works with high-risk patients such as people with: diabetes, hypertension, and extreme clinical markers. Emily’s background and certification affords her the knowledge and expertise to work with this unique population.

Emily’s client load has expanded vastly since being certified, blossoming from roughly 25 to 100 people. Fittingly, Emily describes her clients like flowers, “you pick the petals back.” These clients typically come to her seeking support in the areas of nutrition, physical activity, and stress management. “It’s not my journey, it’s the patient’s journey.  They need to be the one to process and come up with a solution,” Emily says.

Emily doesn’t stick to the traditional sit-down visit either. If her client has a specific goal in mind, she will work with them to achieve that goal during their session. For example, with a client looking to be more physically active she may go on a walk-and-talk style meeting.

Emily describes her personal definition of health coaching as: “acting as a guide & support into behavior change.” She feels like she uses reflective listening most during her job, claiming not over-talking people is key. She describes her life as being full of “fur and chaos,” and with a life like that, listening is important in and out of the job.

Not only is listening the skill Emily uses the most in her job, she believes listening is the key element to successful employment as a health coach. Along with listening, she states staying in the moment, empathy, and open-mindedness as other key attributes for health coaches.

Reflection: Joy and Pain of Coaching

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While coaching in a worksite wellness program I was caught by surprise during a second session when my client told me she was finding it hard to “quiet the voice in my mind”. She expressed worry over constantly worrying. Talking with Josie I began to see this worrying take the shape of a person that walked with Josie every day and sat with her at lunch, and reminded her of deadlines, etc. Worrying became a companion that Josie found “unbearable to think about”’ but also “something that I just do… I think I got it from my Mom…” 

As a quieting practice during our session, Josie and I discussed options for monitoring her worry- is it a problem, does it distract her, is it a tool or coping strategy, and is it something she would like to set address in coaching? In our brainstorming Josie casually mentioned “I wish I could just take a vacation from my own head!”  Hmmm… A vacation. A vacation free of worry. Together, we developed a plan.

Josie would journal her worries for two weeks to just get the lay of the land and literally put her worries down. And next to her worries she would write her joys- what she found made her happy or gave her joy. She called it her Joy & Pain Journal and in the session began to hum and exclaimed “Just like… you know… the old school song by Maze they all play at family reunions!” The lyrics include: Joy and Pain. Is Like Sunshine and Rain.

Happiness

One of the most powerful and well-studied of all positive psychology interventions is also one of the simplest. The instructions are easy-peasy: every night, just before going to sleep, write down three things that went well during the day. This deceptively simple exercise has been shown to increase happiness and decrease depressive symptoms for people for at least 6 months (Seligman et al., 2005).  This exercise may feel too simple to be useful, but it is important to remember that studies have clearly demonstrated the remarkable effectiveness of noting happiness and joy as one of the last things you do before bedtime.

Josie found the journal would serve as a vacation from worrying- a time where if something worried her she would note the date, time, and reason; and decide to “deal with it” the next day- a delay in worrying just for a little while. Josie then began defining the details- does this mean I have to tell people I am taking a vacation? and outlining the parameters of not dealing with the worrisome situation- what if it is urgent and needs my immediate attention? I assured Josie that her instincts are strong and to use her natural judgement as to what needs attention. For this week- rely on the faith that she will handle the concerns that need to be handled. For now, she had the power to file away the worries for later and enjoy her vacation.

Coaching Happiness

I didn’t know if this Joy & Pain Journal would work for Josie and looked forward to hearing about her efforts in the next session. I affirmed how we co-created the plan and remarked how it brought energy and joy to Josie. What I offered to Josie in our planning was an inside peek into a behavior change strategy commonly used in coaching. Together, we partnered up as she demonstrated how to tailor the method to fit her unique needs. Instead of trying to diagnose Josie I tripled the effectiveness of our efforts by making information about behavior change tangible and personally collaborative.

A funny thing happens when we deliberately listen with no preconcieved intentions or plan. As a coach, when we set aside our traditional ways of thinking or doing and just listen we can free up space to hear the background pulse providing a strong, guiding beat for our next steps.

Spotlight: Crystal Dixon- “Coaching is like a tango dance, I follow their lead”

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Crystal is an Academic Professional Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Health Education at UNCG. She joined the department in August 2016. Currently, she teaches six classes in the department, focusing on program planning and evaluation,community engagement and fieldwork. This emphasis comes from Crystal’s expertise in community recruitment, which she developed while working for Durham County. She applies this expertise in community recruitment to academia when recruiting students to the Public Health Program and even more specifically, the Lloyd International Honors College, for which she is the liaison.

Professionally, Crystal has a background in health disparities related to breast cancer outcomes among African American women; but is now expanding her work to include structural racism within the healthcare system. She is a member of many active groups, including the Greensboro Health Disparities Collaborative (GHDC). This organization has received funding from the National Institutes of Health. With this funding, they have worked to successfully close racial gaps among African American breast and lung cancer patients in the Cone Health System.Currently, Crystal is a part of writing a book chapter related to the research of GHDC which is addressing structural racism in the healthcare system.

In addition to her academic appointment, Crystal is a part-time wellbeing coach for Wake Forest University’s Thrive program. She is also an active facilitator for UNCG’s Health Coach Training Program. She says she became a health coach  because she employed health coaching skills while providing diabetes health education to the rural, underserved population in eastern North Carolina. The training was recommended to her by a few colleagues in the department and ultimately the  department chair, Tracy Nichols. Regina McCoy of UNCG’s Health Coach Training Program then recruited her for Thrive, where she currently has 8 clients she sees weekly.

Crystal has encountered a few challenges transitioning into health coaching from her role as a health educator. She describes these challenges as: no longer providing solutions (not an educator), but being an ally , and learning to be authentically present for extended periods of time. It was imperative that she allowed herself to have the  coaching mindset shift in order to overcome these challenges. She discovered letting the clients lead in setting their goals was the most effective way to empower her clients. In her words: “Coaching is like a tango dance, I always follow their lead”.

Editorial: Sayonara Supertracker

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As a health coach, we do not diagnose, treat, or prescribe. However, the health coach does have the duty to be familiar with resources related to general health and wellness. One such resource is the MyPlate Supertracker. When stumbling upon choosemyplate.gov, one can see that many resources at your fingertips, all for free. Perhaps the most beneficial to the general public is the Supertracker. This app allows individuals to track their food intake over time and observe patterns in eating, as well as get complex printouts of nutrient intakes. This is useful to take to a professional for interpretation, plus it’s free. Another great feature of Supertacker is that it has personalization options for children and pregnant women.

The Supertracker app will be discontinued on June 30th, 2018. This announcement is in big, bold lettering across the Supertracker homepage. When investigating why Supertracker is being discontinued, the answer given by the USDA is simple:

“The private sector has since launched many great tools that have a shared mission. It is time for us to discontinue SuperTracker so that we can invest in more modern and efficient ways to help Americans find a healthy eating style that is right for them”

Right! Private enterprise or the “backbone of America” will fill in this gap. So if our clients are left to find their own resources, what other resources are available according to the USDA?:

“There are also a variety of websites and mobile apps available for tracking your food, activity, and weight. We recommend an Internet search to find the tool that is right for you.”

The internet is a great tool. However without the backing of the USDA, a trusted government entity, a client may not have the consumer skills to identify trusted, reliable sources. Furthermore, consumers with lower health literacy may struggle finding valid sound info versus websites selling “fools gold”. A current Google search of the terms “food tracker” yield a top 5 results related all to the Supertracker. Come June 30th these “variety of websites” will be gone.

The USDA is discontinuing MyPlate Supertracker in favor of private enterprise, with no reasonable substitute in the foreseeable future. This will leave our clients without a source of personalized wellness and a major referral resource for the health coaches out of commission.

Spotlight: Scarlett Ruppert

Posted on , updated on by maurine

Scarlett Ruppert – “You’re Health Coaching even when you’re not Health Coaching.”

Scarlett is currently a 2nd year student in UNCG’s Masters of Public Health Education program. Additionally, she is a Graduate Assistant with HealthyUNCG (UNCG’s employee wellness program) and interning with Elon BrainCARE.  She initially found health coaching through her job at HealthyUNCG. Their program has an initiative that gives free health coaching to employees. She wanted to be a part of that program, so she attended the Health Coach Training.

Scarlett sees “being there” as one of the most significant changes she has made in the way she communicates with people. She reflected on the way that she would sometimes interact with clients:  “you don’t realize you’re sitting there thinking about what to tell them to do.” Instead, she now focuses on actively and nonjudgmentally listening. While her work doesn’t always include direct coaching, she finds herself using those skills regularly. Her work at HealthyUNCG includes facilitating focus groups, interviewing employees, performing fitness assessments, and presenting on healthy habits.  In each of these duties, she finds that communication and authentic presence are key components for success.

After finishing her degree, Scarlett would like to work in student or employee wellness. She has used her education and work experiences so far to build up and round out her skills and knowledge base to be ready to assist individuals and organizations in their wellness goals.

An unexpected benefit of the health coaching training for Scarlett was a new friend! While practicing to get her coaching certificate, Scarlett worked with another woman from the program. As “buddy coaches,” her peer was able to help Scarlett work through her own health goals, and the two of them have stayed in contact.

Editorial: Is an Ounce of Prevention Worth a Pound of Cure?

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The Trump administration has cut major funding to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Medicaid, and the National Institutes of Health. In President Trump’s State of the Union speech, given on January 30th, 2018, he talked about how reducing the price of prescription drugs in the United States, will be one of his greatest priorities. Bringing the price of prescription drugs down will be a great thing for many Americans who struggle to keep up with the current prices that exceed those of many other countries.

Articles from Health Affairs (“Do Prevention Or Treatment Services Save Money? The Wrong Debate”) and the World Health Organization (“Prevention is better than cure, say Romanian doctors”), mention how cost-effective and beneficial it could be to focus on prevention. These articles talk about the importance of educating the public and shifting our thinking from expensive technology and medication, to interventions and behavior changes. Health coaching and motivational interviewing could be used to incorporate and encourage this behavior change in many settings, and a wide population.

This being said, we must ask ourselves what the main priority in this country should be. Sure, we can lower the price of medications, but would it be more beneficial to spend money on prevention? Although not all conditions can be prevented, with a focus on more preventative strategies, we can reduce the need of medication purchases overall. Where is it most beneficial to act. When people become in need of treatment, or before treatment is even necessary?

Spotlight: Andi Weiss

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Andi Weiss – “Education is Just a Piece of the Puzzle”

“Health coaching changes the way we look at patients and their challenges. It puts patients in the driver’s seat, allows them to set their own agenda, and leads to sustained behavior change.”

Andi works at MicroMass Communications, Inc., a company that applies health behavior principles to solve business challenges for pharmaceutical clients.

Andi has been with MicroMass since 2008, and serves as Lead Behaviorist, Partnerships and Advocacy. In this role, she uses her excellent communication skills to build and foster relationships with outside healthcare organizations, universities, and pharmaceutical clients.

MicroMass does not follow traditional marketing strategies. Instead, they use evidence-based behavioral approaches to get to the source of what’s driving or preventing behavior change for both patients and healthcare providers. As part of its behavioral foundation, MicroMass uses evidence-based techniques to shift attitudes, build skills, and change behavior.

“Education is just one piece of the puzzle. But, education alone is not enough to change behavior. Just telling a person what to do, like adding exercise to their routine, is not sufficient to overcome barriers and build the skills they need.”

MicroMass uses health coaching principles to improve the dialogue between patients and their healthcare providers. For example, MicroMass encourages patients and healthcare providers to use open-ended questions to uncover patient needs and work together to set meaningful goals. MicroMass clients consider health coaching as an integral part of their program because of the impact it has on health outcomes.

Andi is constantly trying to incorporate new strategies into her work and improve the skills of others. She recently completed an advanced course on motivational interviewing and helped teach a seminar on health coaching and adherence at University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

PBC