Past H.E.R.E. Newsletters   Past Mentors

December 2001

Elaine Engle
Spokane County
Health District

Elaine taught at the University of Nebraska-Omaha in Health Education Department and served as faculty advisor of Eta Sigma Gamma (1985-1988). While in Nebraska she was appointed by Governor Bob Kerry to the five- member Nebraska Library Commission, which is responsible for oversight of the state library system.

We asked Elaine what words of advice she wishes she had received during her first year in public health. She replied wryly, "That my job would never be done, there would never be enough money to provide the needed services and what we actually do in public health daily is little understood by our community." Elaine believes that health educators do make a difference in the lives of those we work with even though we may not have the opportunity to prove it. She says, "People can and do change behaviors to positively affect their lives. Health educators are one important part of that process."

Securing stable funding for existing programs and developing new efforts to meet needs identified by the community are future challenges Elaine sees for public health. Continuing challenges are gaining community support for efforts that are controversial or that use effective but unproven methodologies.

Elaine enjoys dancing, cross-country skiing, gardening and traveling. Elaine can talk with you about internships, volunteer experiences and job opportunities at Spokane Regional Health District. She can also offer perspectives and experiences from over 20 years in health promotion and 16 years in public health. Elaine can be reached by email at eengle@spokanecounty.org.

Ellen Phillips-Angeles
Public Health Seattle
& King County

Ellen Phillips-Angeles is the manager for the Women’s Health Unit/Breast and Cervical Health Program at Public Health - Seattle & King County (PHSKC). She earned a BS from the University of Michigan and an MS in Community Health Education from the University of Washington.

 Ellen's interest in health education began while working as a VISTA volunteer. She coordinated a free health clinic and facilitated a women's health education group to ensure neighborhood access to health care.  Here she learned the positive impact that health education has upon both individuals and communities. After college Ellen became a health educator for Ballard Community Hospital. She’s been a health educator with PHSKC for the past 20 years. As a lead health educator, she has developed health education programs, policies, services and materials. For six years she prepared and implemented courses in school-based sexuality education programs for Seattle Pacific University. Currently she directs the Breast and Cervical Health Program (BCHP) for a 5-county region and integrates primary prevention programs. She’s a clinical faculty member for UW Department of Health Sciences, Health Behavior and Health Promotion, and co-principal Investigator for a qualitative research project to identify reasons why African American women, found eligible for BCHP services through outreach and education programs, refuse mammography services.

 Ellen's advice to those new to health education is, "Stay flexible to meet rapidly changing public health needs.  Develop strong and effective work relationships within and outside the organization.  Jump in with both feet.  Your skills in group process, training, program planning, implementation and evaluation will keep you afloat. Join health education professional associations like SOPHE and serve on the board and on committees."

Ellen believes sustaining the infrastructure of public health is a continuing challenge for health education.  She says, "Budgets shrink every year, particularly for local and unobligated funds that support the organization's core. For health education the challenge will be implementing all the great programs that have been proven effective during the past couple decades, particularly those that address the root causes of disease and death."

Ellen enjoys jogging, bike riding, movies, reading, and gardening. Her expertise includes program planning and implementation, training, materials development, coalition development and community organizing and direct education. Topics she’s focused on include women's health, breast and cervical health, breastfeeding promotion, and sexuality education. Ellen is easiest to reach in the fall and spring and can be contacted by email at
ellen.phillips-angeles@metrokc.gov.

Joanne
Bonnar Prado
DOH - Environmental
Health Assessment

One of Joanne's highest professional achievements came recently when she was asked to help improve the DOH Pesticide Illness Monitoring System by helping to plan and facilitate a series of focus group discussions with farm workers in the Yakima Valley. The farm workers discussed experiences and beliefs about pesticides in the work place and the reasons why they may or may not seek health care when they feel ill. Many participants stayed after the sessions ended to shake her hand and offer warmest thanks for listening to their views. Joanne is eager to provide concrete services to other public health educators working more directly with communities, in local health districts and departments, clinics, or other community service organizations. She says, "Whether they are asking for data, advice, or help with developing community education interventions, I am passionate about supporting the excellent work of others."

Joanne's advice to up and coming health educators: "A lot of different health professionals feel deeply about public health education, yet might not value the time, training and skill it takes to do it well. It may not help you professionally to be identified as a 'Public Health Educator' so package yourself differently if you need to. But never doubt that the basic core content of this field has profound importance to the lives of people every day, and makes a contribution to public health the world over." Joanne believes that standing up and speaking clearly about the broad public health issues that impact the most vulnerable people is a continuing challenge. She says, "Poor people, immigrants, elders, and the workers who put food on our tables and clothes on our backs need strong public health leaders and institutions. "

Joanne's family is her greatest gift and wonder of her life. She and her husband enjoy all the ups and downs of parenting their three children. With the little time that remains she also enjoys music, hiking, gardening and sports. Her expertise includes environment health, community involvement and environmental risk communication planning and evaluation. In particular she'd love to connect with people interested in the public health aspects of safe, humane and sustainable agriculture. Joanne can be contacted by email joanne.prado@doh.wa.gov or phone 360-236-3172.

Theresa Cross
Clark County
Health Department

Theresa Cross is a senior health educator for Southwest Washington Health District (SWWHD).  She earned a B.S. in Community Health Education from Oregon State University.  While at OSU she completed academic requirements for the American Dietetic Association.  She did her dietetic internship at Oregon Health Sciences University (she's a Registered Dietitian.)  Theresa earned a M.S. in Community Health Education from Portland State University.

While Theresa was completing her B.S. she worked in long term care managing dietary services.  She started her career with SWWHD as a nutritionist for the WIC department.  When the Public Health Improvement Plan came out, the health district formed a multidisciplinary Urgent Public Health Needs Team (UPHN).  On this team she wore two hats—nutritionist and health educator.  The UPHN Team became what is now the Health Promotion Unit.  Today she works full time in health education.  Over the last few years she has transitioned from teen tobacco prevention to doing more with tobacco media.  She also works in staff development.  She provides training for both the Health Promotion Unit and District staff.  Theresa's goal is for all Health District staff to "think like health educators" in their work.

Theresa believes health education helps people live healthier lives.  She feels everyone desires to be the best they can be, and that it's a basic human trait.  Our challenge is to find what the "best" is for a particular group and find ways to motivate and support them to strive for health.  It could look different with each group.  Theresa says, "The text books teach the science behind what we do, but it can look entirely different in practice.  Our work is not done in a vacuum.  We have community partners, human nature and very real politics each affecting our plans."

Building relationships with other disciplines and resisting the urge to see health educators as the only profession uniquely qualified to help others make health behavior changes are challenges Theresa sees for the future.  "Sociology, social psychology, marketing, and communications can offer us a more comprehensive approach to our work as health behavior change agents," she said.  She feels it behooves us to learn all we can from every area.  It will only help us be better at what we do.

This time of the year it is hard to keep Theresa in the office.  She loves to garden, especially flowers.   She is still trying to figure out a way to combine her passion for growing things with the health educator part of her.  She also enjoys reading, movies, walking, hiking and bike riding.  Her expertise includes planning health education programs and interventions and troubleshooting.  She'd be happy to share her experiences in SWWHD's Teens Against Tobacco Use Program and how it evolved.  Theresa can be reached by email Tcross@SWWHD.WA.GOV or by phone 360-296-4731.

Margo Harris
School and Community Specialist

Margo Harris is a self-employed School and Community Specialist, providing consulting and contract services here in Washington State.  She earned a BA in Psychology from Fairleigh Dickinson University and a MAT in Public Health from the University of Massachusetts, including K-12 teaching certification.

From the time she finished graduate school she's been teaching college level courses for such schools as Cortland State College, Ohio University, Western Washington University and Antioch University.  She's facilitated classes such as, smoking cessation and advance directives (e.g. do not resuscitate orders) and workshops for K-12 educators.  She has also given presentations to health care providers.  Margo has co-authored a textbook titled “Designing School Health Curricula.”  She has also written K-12 curricula and patient education materials.  Other job experiences include direct patient education and working with the American Lung Association on the local, state and national level.

Margo is passionate about making connections.  She works especially hard to increase the quality and quantity of health education in schools.  She strives to improve students' knowledge of health and to help them see the connections between the health choices they make today and the lifetime effects of those choices.   With adults she strives to connect them with accurate health information, skills to effectively access and use the health care system, and opportunities to maintain healthy lifestyles.

Margo wishes someone had explained to her that public health is a business like any other enterprise, whether for-profit, or non-profit and you need to learn business skills, not just public health skills.  She recalls a trainer's comment, "To do business in the 90s, you have to be fast, flexible, focused and friendly."  She sees future challenges from increased competition for available resources and the need to stretch the resources we have.  Margo notes, "We will need to work tirelessly in our jobs and our professional organizations to keep public health in the public eye, adequately funded and recognized as a community asset needed by all community members."

Dan Moran
Public Health Seattle
& King County

Dan's career started at PHSKC as an Environmental Health Specialist providing general environmental health inspection services for the food, living environment and pest control programs. Within two years he was promoted to a Senior Environmental Health Specialist for the Chemical Hazards and Solid Waste Programs. Later he took a position as supervisor for Local Hazardous Waste Management Program. Today he is the acting manager for the Environmental Hazards Section. He coordinates the daily operations of the section, including the Solid Waste Program and the Vector/Nuisance Control Program, and supervises approximately 50 employees. He also responds to media inquiries on about these programs.

Dan is dedicated to working for a future of healthier people and healthier communities. His advice to professionals entering into public health is, "Don't be afraid to test many pathways within public health service. Don't feel the need to follow a certain prescribed career trajectory." He encourages people to talk with a variety of public health professionals from a variety of disciplines, hear their stories, and learn from their mistakes and successes. Dan stresses, "Once you commit to a particular path, engage in change with resilience and optimism." Dan sees our future challenge in public health as coping with ever broadening mandates with fewer dollars and staff to accomplish them. He suggests we will need to become even better at using epidemiological and environmental data to refocus current programs and advocate, when necessary, for new programs or resources.

Dan's outside pleasures include raising his three daughters (ages 11, 8 and 6), taking them to YMCA camp-outs, skiing and camping. He finds himself dreaming of tropical beach vacations— and gets there every once in awhile. His expertise includes environmental health practice, policy and planning. Specific topics he has experience with include solid waste and hazardous materials management, indoor air quality, asthma management, and lead poisoning prevention. Dan can be reached by email dan.moran@metrokc.gov or by phone 206-296-4731.

Jane Wright
Kittitas County Health Department

Jane started her career in heath education at the Kittitas County Health Department when they received AIDS Omnibus Funds. Thirteen years later she has gone from a Health Educator generalist to Assessment Coordinator and builder of community partnerships. She spent a year as an interim administrator-- a job which she says she happily relinquished. At present she's involved in creating an internal evaluation tool for assessment and quality improvement for their health department programs. She's also serving on the statewide steering committee which oversees the development and implementation of the Public Health Standards.

There is a special place in Jane's heart for HIV/AIDS and tobacco education. She says, "I'm passionate about empowering people to educate and advocate for themselves." She loves making connections between individuals and organizations with common goals and interests, and convening community partners to tackle specific issues in a spirit of creative collaboration. Jane's advice to new health educators is to "keep it simple" by focusing on two or three key messages and always involving your audience as much as possible. She sees one of the biggest ongoing challenges for health education to be competition with the media and entertainment industry. She also believes, "funding will be a problem until society and policy makers embrace the value of the upstream approach-- putting our efforts into prevention instead of treatment. We need to continue to measure as best we can the success of our work so that organizations can see the value in continuing to have a health education component."

Outside of the health department Jane enjoys yoga, hiking, spending time with her husband and dogs, and traveling to warm places. Her expertise includes convening and sustaining advisory boards and community groups; working with the media in a rural community; schmoozing the good old boys so that you can get what you want/need to do your job; and diplomacy. Jane can be reached by email WRIGJ@co.kittitas.wa.us or by phone 509-962-7005.

Ruth
Francis Williams
DOH - ChildProfile

Ruth's career began with a community-based program as a Perinatal Health Educator developing programs and classes for women whose children were born addicted to substances. Orange County in California brought her on board as a health educator to provide tobacco education trainings in the public health clinics and county jail facilities. Then for three years she was with the March of Dimes in Seattle as the Education Program Manager. She's been with the Department of Health for the past five years, three years with the Office of Health Promotion and two years with CHILD Profile.

Preventive Health is a strong passion of Ruth's. "To put a program in place that can help a person avoid health problems or injuries is an incredible feeling," she says. "Then to see it really work is the true reward." She feels the best part about health education is that it can be applied to all aspects of a person's life. Ruth's advice to new health educators is to "remember you can't do everything but you sure can try." Ruth sees finding a niche in the preventive health field as a future challenge for health educators. "It seems as though you need to be more and more diverse." She has seen it go in waves from specialists to generalists. She advises to get as much experience in as many areas as you can. Supervisory experience is very helpful in moving up. She says, "It is easy to settle into a routine and not expand ourselves; none of us wants to become the 'old health educator'. So keep up-to-date, informed and trained."

Ruth shared with us some of her outside interests and hobbies like reading, hiking, and camping (as long as a motel is near!). When she gets a chance she enjoys taking in the sites and sounds of the ocean. Most of all she loves learning to live life though the eyes of her three-year-old daughter. She'd be happy to share her experiences, in maternal and child health, materials development, and social marketing. Ruth can be contacted by phone (360) 236-3549.

Tizzy Bennett
Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center

Tizzy began her health education career with Metro in the Water Quality Section. During her tenure she developed one of the first household hazardous waste programs in the nation. For the past 18 years she has been with Children's Hospital. Tizzy fondly remembers being Ms. Yuk for four years. Also at Children's she worked hard on drowning prevention and a life vest law, and aided in the integration of health education into patient and family education. Today in addition to her work at Children's she is a clinical instructor for the MPH Program at the University of Washington.

As a health educator Tizzy feels passionately about working with groups of people to facilitate change. Whether it's a committee at the hospital, parents, or coalitions, she enjoys figuring out what needs to be done, doing it, and then evaluating to see if they got it done. Tizzy's advice to new health educators: "Push yourself to assess needs and measure results. It's so easy to jump right into the 'doing part.' Find a mentor. Don't limit yourself to health educators to help support and foster your professional development. Subscribe to a journal that is relevant to your work and read it. Get involved with the local chapter of SOPHE (Society for Public Health Education), WSPHA (Washington State Public Health Association) or another health education related organization. Let your supervisor know what your goals are and get involved with projects that will help you reach them. If you can't find a job right away as a health educator, choose volunteer experiences that will help build your experience and connections."

Tizzy's outside interests and hobbies include travel (her next trip is always on the horizon), coaching soccer, cooking, spending time outside, reading young adult literature and playing with her children. She'd be happy to share her experiences, brainstorm, and problem solve on anything related to health education. After 18 years at Children's her expertise is children and families. Tizzy can be contacted by email: ebenne@chmc.org.

Melinda is the Health Promotion Program Manager for the Kitsap County Health District.  She earned her undergraduate degree in Health Education and her Master's in Health Administration.  Before moving to Kitsap, she worked in public health at the state level for 20 years.

Melinda's accomplishments are diverse and impressive.  She was co-founder of the Washington State Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition of Washington and helped launch the First Steps media campaign and toll free hotline.  In past years Melinda managed the Adolescent Pregnancy and Parenting.  She has developed and managed statewide programs such as the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program and the initial Abstinence Education Program.  She coordinated a parenting education program and curricula entitled, "You and Your Baby" and "You and Your Toddler."  Melinda enjoys social marketing and working with the media; she aided in the introduction of media literacy to DOH, launched the Teen Pregnancy Prevention media campaign, and worked with the University of Washington to develop the Teen Futures campaign.  You may have seen Melinda on King 5 Top Story News.

As a health educator she feels passionate about adolescent health issues especially youth development, adolescent pregnancy prevention and school health.  She also enjoys collaborating with groups on a common vision.  Her advice to new health educators would be to get involved with all aspects of your community, always engage your target audience, and ask lots of questions.  Most of all HANG IN THERE!  Some future challenges she sees for health educators include integrating evaluation into all projects and staying abreast of best practices and current literature.

Melinda's outside interests and hobbies include her children and their many activities, skiing, travel and getting together with friends.  Her professional strengths are program management, coalition building, looking at the big picture (vision) and evaluation.  You can contact Melinda by phone 360-337-5224 or email: harmom@health.co.kitsap.wa.us.

Lyndia Vold
Spokane Regional
Health District