Intermountain Health

Anne Woodward joined St. Mary's Regional Hospital in Grand Junction, Colorado as a contracted valet attendant. She did this for three years until the valet company reduced her hours. Worried she wouldn’t be able to pay her bills, she started looking for new opportunities.    See how her helpful colleagues at St. Mary's encouraged her on a path that would lead to her career development in the field of sleep medicine, and how she utilized Intermountain’s education benefits to pursue education that enabled her to become a polysomnographic technologist in the article below. Article written by: Katie Cain #TogetherForTheHealthiestLives

On April 21, 2023, Karen Conner, 58, from Lander, Wyoming took a simple walk with her husband and three dogs down a dirt road in La Verkin, Utah. She approached a cliff to investigate a foul smell, but everything after that is a blur.   She doesn’t remember tripping and falling more than 40 feet down the cliff, or the first responders arriving on scene. She barely remembers her husband kissing her on the forehead as Life Flight placed her in a helicopter en route to St. George Regional Hospital’s trauma center.  But Karen remembered the excellent care from Intermountain Health that kept her alive and she made sure the staff at St. George Regional knew that. Karen returned to St. George on August 15, 2024, to personally thank as many people as she could, validating the work of our caregivers. Article written by: Brad Gillman and Joseph Gaccione #TogetherForTheHealthiestLives #WeAreLeadersInClinicalExcellence

Mi nombre es Sebastián y trabajo para Select Health. Me acabo de dar la vacuna contra la gripe para poder estar protegido este otoño e invierno y evitar pasar días con tos y dolor en la cama. 💪 ¿Qué preferiría estar haciendo este otoño en lugar de estar enfermo en cama? Publique su selfie con la curita de su vacuna contra la influenza y el hashtag #GoodByeFluHelloHealthy

Dedicating his life to the service of others, Dr. Rob Ferguson, Intermountain Health Peaks Region chief medical officer, and his wife, Andrea, founded Amanaki Fo'ou in 2014. Amanaki Fo'ou (Tongan for “A New Hope”) is an organization dedicated to eliminating diabetes among indigenous populations. Six of the top ten nations with the highest per capita rate of diabetes are in the South Pacific. Tonga is in the top five in the world for Body Mass Index (BMI) per capita so the people were struggling with noncommunicable diseases that are associated with obesity, hypertension, kidney failure, loss of eyesight, loss of limbs, and more. Dr. Ferguson evaluated previous international efforts in Tonga to address diabetes. He and Andrea realized that the material was not relatable for this nation. There were incorrect assumptions that people already understood concepts of portion size, carbohydrates, or glucose. They knew he’d have to take a different approach, and one that was culturally sensitive. “It became clear to us that in Tonga the people pay more attention to their family, royalty, and religious leaders than they do their doctors,” said Dr. Ferguson. “They’re a very religious, family-oriented nation, so we knew if we wanted them to understand what we were teaching, we would need to work closely with those groups.” He and his team worked with religious leaders and a cultural advisor on what materials and language to use. The ‘Amanaki Fo’ou team partnered with the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Education, Tonga Health, the royal family, and other local leaders and organizations in Tonga. Once these individuals understood the vision, they became advocates for the work. Over the years, Dr. Ferguson and his team have trained wound care clinicians and surgeons and have done a lot of community training. They also brought the training to churches, which had an enormous success rate. There was a 53% decrease from 2014 to 2019 in diabetic foot sepsis cases. The hospital team also achieved a decrease in rates of major amputations, and hospital stays decreased from two months to less than two weeks. With their partners in Tonga, they introduced programs like healthy schools and healthy churches to promote better health practices. They started a garden program to address the transition that had taken place from consuming home-grown foods to eating mostly packaged foods.  “Much like the work we do at Intermountain, this work is also focused on caring for the poor and vulnerable, and helping people live their healthiest lives possible,” said Dr. Ferguson. “It’s looking at social determinants of health to determine what’s causing health issues in these communities. That’s how we figure out how we can start to affect lasting changes for the better.” Article written by: Katie Cain #TogetherForTheHealthiestLives

📋 Intermountain Health’s involvement with community program Latinos in Action is teaching skills—and possibly saving lives. Intermountain Health and Latinos in Action have partnered up to provide students with the opportunity to get trained as Health Screeners. This micro-credential provides a means to develop skills and a knowledge base for addressing social determinants of health, pre-diabetes, and high blood pressure. The course gives students content expertise and necessary skills to successfully perform health screenings, interpret the collected data, and become a health advocate. High school junior Zabrina Garcia took the course (twice!) through Latinos in Action. For an assignment, she screened her grandpa and discovered he had prediabetes. For people like Zabrina’s grandpa, the program offers several potential next steps. It prepared Zabrina to talk to her grandpa about what diabetes could mean for him and refer him to Intermountain resources, including free disease management classes.  Zabrina graduated last year—and her grandpa was there to see it. She credits her Latino in Action class with helping her figure out she wants to major in early childhood development this fall at Utah Valley University.

WEEK 23 Deep Breathing Take in a deep breath while raising your arms over your head and exhale as you lower your arms. Repeat two more times.

Vanessa Kibble is the nutrition services manager at Park City Hospital in Park City, Utah, and has been there for four years. She oversees a team of caregivers who directly interact with patients; ensures all room service (patient meals) are properly handled; and manages the cafes, bistros, and catering as well. Vanessa also rounds throughout the week and prioritizes connecting with patients who may have a tough time ordering meals or are on restricted (therapeutic) diets. She often walks them through meeting both the therapeutic diet orders and finding a meal to satisfy them. Vanessa is also a highly skilled chef with an incredible resume. But according to her family, becoming a chef was not an option. In fact, when Vanessa decided to become a chef, she snuck off to Europe to go to culinary school. After finishing school, she worked her way into Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant in London's prestigious Claridge’s Hotel. She eventually made her way to Utah and owned her own restaurant before landing at Intermountain Health. We caught up with her to discuss her transition from restaurants to healthcare, her approach to working with patients, how she handles meeting medical needs and patient food requests, and her decision to become a chef in the article below. Article written by: Christa Bruning #TogetherForTheHealthiestLives

Un recordatorio en este Mes de Concientización sobre el Cáncer de Mama... las mamografías salvan vidas. El CDC nos informa que la mamografía ha reducido las tasas de mortalidad por cáncer de mama en los EE. UU. en casi un 40 % desde 1990. Si tiene 40 años o más y no tiene antecedentes de cáncer de mama en su familia, es hora de hacerse mamografías con regularidad. Si tiene antecedentes familiares u otros factores de riesgo, hable con su médico sobre cuándo y con qué frecuencia debe hacerse las pruebas de detección.

A reminder this Breast Cancer Awareness Month…mammograms save lives. The CDC reports that mammography has reduced breast cancer mortality rates in the U.S. by nearly 40% since 1990. If you are 40 or older without history of breast cancer in your family, it’s time to get regular mammograms. If you do have family history or other risk factors, talk to your doctor about when and how often you should be screened.

A chance meeting on “Y Mountain” in Provo, Utah, led to a life-saving kidney transplant for a local pastor whose health was deteriorating and was desperately waiting for an organ donor. Krissy Miller, a 49-year-old mother of four from Provo, felt a strong connection with Shiller Joseph, a 45-year-old pastor from Florida, when they crossed paths on the trail on “Y Mountain” in Provo on that fateful day in September 2023. The pair started talking and soon learned Shiller was waiting on a kidney and had moved up the transplant list since coming to Utah. Krissy had wanted to be a kidney donor, even going through the screening process, but needed to improve her own health first--leading to lots of Y Mountain hikes. She says that morning she prayed for guidance before her hike. On that very hike, she met Shiller and his wife, Rhona, who had recently moved from Florida to start a ministry in Utah. Right there, Krissy offered to give him one of her kidneys. The two exchanged information and kept in touch. After several tests, they were a perfect match. On April 2, 2024, Krissy and Shiller underwent successful surgeries at Intermountain Medical Center in Murray. After three years of dialysis and only a year on the waiting list, Shiller got his new kidney. “Had I stayed in Florida, I would have waited at least eight years,” said Shiller. Intermountain Health’s transplant program has one of the shortest wait times in the country and is recognized for providing the best match for incompatible pairs and compatible pairs, like Krissy and Shiller. Finding a living donor not only shortens the national waiting list, but those organs also tend to survive longer than ones from deceased donors. With more than 90,000 people across the country waiting for a kidney transplant, living kidney donors can offer them a second chance at life. “The gift of life that comes from a living donor transplant can provide a shorter wait time, reduce the risk of complications and offer a better chance for long-term success for the person who receives your kidney,” said Donald Morris, MD, Intermountain Health kidney transplant medical director.