e was actually, uh, interested in health care during high school, and that interested me a lot. And I had initial desires to be, you know, a physician or you know, of another type of clinician. But as I took mawr college coursework, I realized that that wasn't quite, um, resonating with me. Super well. So I looked at a health care management and ended up going down that track and studied my undergrad at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, and then earned a masters of public health at Long Beach State University, which is in California. And then, um, to really put me mawr directly on the business administration path. And I got an MBA from the University of Utah. Kind of like a mid career juncture, if you will. And so I've worked for, um, public health agencies for for a state health agency, also local health agencies. And then currently, for the last five years, I've been employed by Intermountain Healthcare in Salt Lake City, and I helped one programs and services that target the underserved or high risk populations. Those populations who need assistance with their health care could be, you know, economically related. It could be, you know, insurance related, and we provide programs to help these patients manage their health care costs. Um, and I think, you know, just having a desire Thio work with good people in in the community and helping them improve their health outcomes and helping them gain access to the health care services and programs they need so that they could take care of themselves and their families. And I think that's a lot about really has helped shape my career path, and I'm pretty much 100% devoted and committed to the health care sector. And that's really where I find my passion and where I've worked, you know, pretty much since Day one, and it's been a really great experience.

Yes, a lot of my responsibilities are working with community partners, so that could be across a variety of sectors, including the business sector, nonprofit academia, school district's, um, government, civic organizations as well and other health care agencies. To ah, couple of two of my major responsibilities as a community health director with Intermountain Healthcare is one working with what we call safety net clinics. Clinics that help serve the under served those who are vulnerable, marginalized and just don't have. Perhaps the resource is to be able to access care. And so that's one of my major responsibilities. And it's something I enjoy very much, and some of the decisions that I handle in my job is we. Intermountain is for fortunate to be in a position where we're able to provide funding to a lot of these clinic across the state of Utah, and these clinics then are able toe increase access so, you know, maybe they can provide Mawr dental services or primary care services or behavioral health services. Whatever the case may be, so Intermountain, very WeII feel fortunate, be able to work with really good companies that are focusing on underserved communities. Another major responsibility I have is working with behavioral health agencies. So behavioral health has been identified as a health priority for the state of Utah, not only in Utah, but it's, you know, in other areas of the country and even the world where need could be. Maybe it's around suicide prevention. Maybe it's around, you know, basic therapy. You know, counseling could be medication assisted treatment, which is kind of around opioid misuse. Intermountain spends a lot of time and resource is and helping address the if you want to call it drug addiction, you know, helping people recover and Livan addiction, free life. And in Utah, those those problems definitely exist. And Intermountain, I wouldn't say we're the leader in, you know, providing thes behavior, health services. But we dio and where we feel very fortunate to be able to do so and so in that regard this responsibility. Intel's working with a variety of behavior health agencies, mainly in the the AWG and Salt Lake Provo areas of Utah that we work with these and most of them are non profit agencies, and they open their doors and provide these wonderful services, and Inter Mountain comes in as a za partner to be able to support the services that these companies provide weekly hours. Yeah. I mean, definitely full time. I mean, I am salary most a lot of positions management type positions in a mountain, our salary position. So at least 40 hours a week usually is above that. I'm probably between 40 and 50. The week we do work Monday to Friday. Our boss basically asked us to be available from 8 to 5, particularly during co vid and working from home. So Intermountain, as a company, we're about 30% non clinical. So if you look at our finance sector, I t the the community service, you know, area that I work in on bears a lot of back and positions that are not clinical. So we don't have to show up to a hospital or a clinic were able to do our work from home, which is very advantageous, right? So 8 to 5 each day and then in a non cove in world. Basically, there's a little more flex flexibility, and they basically just asked, like any other group to be able to at least put in eight hours a day, five days a week. We're travel, you know, for for Intermountain. It kind of depends on the position, but there's there's a little bit of travel we might get involved with. Annual conferences where maybe we present on our published work and how we're addressing maybe something like diabetes prevention or high blood pressure management. So there are opportunities where we're able to go toe annual conferences about once or twice a year, uh, to present on our work and then other travel. We do, you know, in a in a regular world, we are traveling to meet with partners face to face. That's very common. Obviously, virtual platforms have been across the board with Zoom or Web backs or Google meets, you know, so we definitely use those platforms to be able to meet right now. But otherwise, prior to cove it, we love to get face to face with partners because sometimes we're also negotiating contracts, other agreements and really having an open and deep conversation with these community partners. It's beneficial to be able to do it face to face. So sometimes there is that travel around the local area as well, and then, lastly, working from home, I mean, it's been great. In fact, I'm advocating that we're we might be able to do it somewhat permanently. We'll see and things like it's been effective, you know, it reduces the travel time, of course, and Inter Mountain is also very concerned about our air quality. You know, in Salt Lake City, in the Valley and the surrounding areas, we do get a decent sheriff, poor air quality. So we are also perhaps contributing to that factor and being a contributor, toe better air quality. So that's been advantageous as well. So yeah, I think that's sort of got on these questions.

so challenges in a job like mine, you know, since we work with a lot of communities on community partners as well. But for community members, you know, So in the on the community health team for Intermountain Healthcare, we work with a lot of uninsured folks. You know, for whatever reason, that maybe we don't question them, we don't judge them. We're not a government facility. So were ableto We're a private organization. So we do what we need to do to be able to meet their needs. We work hard at doing that. One of the challenges, though, is a lot of these good families have limited Resource is, you know, they may lack of vehicle to get to their doctor's appointment. They made a black child care. They may have a couple of kids at home, and they're not able to leave them at home, so that could be a barrier. Others may be in a difficult housing situation. We all Intermountain also works with a lot of the homeless populations across our service areas. You know there's good people out there, and whatever the situation may be that put them in a homeless situation, Um, there's still, you know a business aspect to it where you know they are part of society and the big challenges, a lot of them just simple, lack the housing. So that's not necessarily an inter mountain thing. That's where you get with, like the Utah Housing Authority. Maybe it's HUD housing, urban development and, you know, and then work with those partners and say, Hey, what can we do to contribute? You need a little bit of capital to be able to get some What do they call it? Permanent, supportive housing, where they then receive services like Maybe it's a clinical social worker are a case manager. So those air those are some of the challenges we're up against and related to that as well with patients in the health care system is behavior change. You know, we all have our different styles and how we live our lives, and sometimes there may not be a healthy behavior. Maybe it's illicit drug use as a quick example and so helping these patients understand the need to change, and many of them do want to change. They just may not be capable of changing because the addiction may be very strong with them, but that is a challenge. How do we help these patients change their behavior and become and improve their health outcomes? Andan Another one is the community partners. So I mentioned that a couple of times when we worked with organizations across the state. We a lot of them have tight budgets. You know, there's a lot of them could be nonprofits, and in that regard, they may not be able. Thio, you know, meet all the expectations of their organization. So they may call on Intermountain Healthcare to say, Hey, that was dental Clinic and dental demand in Utah is high because dental is not covered as a Medicaid benefit in Utah, which is unfortunate. So they need to be able to access a dentist if that need arises, of course, and Intermountain doesn't provide dental work, But we do partner with agencies who do provide dental work. And so one of the challenges, I think, is how do we meet that need financially and you know? So we work with philanthropy, philanthropists Ah, good people out in Utah or even elsewhere that are able to contribute financially and were then able to receive those funds and we manage them and allocate the funds to non profit organizations, that they increase the number of chairs they have in their dental office or the number of appointments that they can see more patients approaches that are effective in dealing with these challenges. So I think having being in an organization like Intermountain Healthcare, Intermountain Healthcare is a non profit organization where ah, 501 c three registered organization with the I. R. S. And so because of that, we can fundraise and we do fundraise just like many universities, dio and other organizations. And, you know, I guess in that regard, we're no different. So that's one approach we do take. And that's not something that the community health team does. Intermountain has what we just call a foundation, like many other organizations, and our foundation goes toe work and they meet with those individuals who may be ableto make contributions, and then we, in turn, invest those funds back into the community. And so they were gonna use the funds Thio support. Maybe it's an asthma program. Or maybe it's ah ah specialty care type program for Children with special needs or something to that effect. I think another approach in dealing with challenges is getting to know uh, the people you're working with, and I think that applies to any factor, right? Even if somebody is working in the banking sector, they have to get to know their own people, whether it's clients or different financial groups that they're working with. So healthcare is no different. And as we have better working relationships, we're able, then tohave more honest conversations and just, uh, the breadth and depth of our conversations can be more effective to say, How do we meet thes community Health needs out there, and you know Intermountain can't do it all and we don't want to do it. All those great groups out there that honestly could do it better than we dio Cancer is one example in the mountains, not the leader of cancer in the state of Utah. It's actually the Huntsman Cancer Institute, which is part of the University of Utah. So we recognize that, and we're happy that there's really good cancer experts out there. So we try to develop a relationship to be able to move the work forward. Um, and then I say another movie a lot of dealing with these challenges is having contingency plans. You know, having backup plans to say, Hey, if we go down one road and it doesn't work, you know what's going to be our Plan B? And I think an example. There is thes behavioral health agencies, where many of them offer residential services where a patient will come in and they'll stay overnight for days or maybe even weeks to address their issue. And many of these groups cap out they don't have enough beds in their residential facility, so working with them to be able to identify other organizations that possibly could take on more patients. Eso as an example of a contingency plan because there's some that are just talk tapped out there just so busy. They love to help, but they can. So Intermountain will then pivot and try to find another organization of work with. So I think that's a few of the, you know approaches that we're working with