Lovelace Women’s Hospital has been an active partner in the community of Albuquerque supporting health and wellness through a number of community outreach activities and two annual events growing in popularity – Girls’ Night Out and Day of Dance. The message behind the outreach is to encourage the community to take an active role in educating themselves on how to improve their health and how to access resources available to support a healthy lifestyle. Yet, feedback from their own employees promoted an annual campaign to bring that outreach inside the hospital to benefit employees’ health and wellness.
“Wellness Minute for Employee Engagement is a campaign that we created to address work/life balance and self care,” shares Celeste Miller, Lovelace Women’s Hospital human resources and community events coordinator. “Those were the areas we heard from our employees that they wanted more resources.” The goals of the campaign that launched in January of 2017 are to create a wellness culture, make it easy to participate and reward employees. Celeste knew the campaign also needed to be fun.
Each month offers a different theme and challenge for employees. For example, in March, National Nutrition Month, employees submitted healthy recipes with the winning entry served to visitors and employees in the dining center. The director
of nutritional services hosted a healthy cooking class for employees, who also enjoyed smoothies.
“We take it for granted that our employees know about health and wellness,” adds Celeste. “We need to communicate and engage with employees so they know we are taking care of them and we do care about them.” That is the culture, Celeste says, Lovelace Women’s Hospital continues to build upon. “I’m still new here, but I feel that I joined a community. People care about what you’re doing today and everyone wants to help. I want our employees to know that we care about them as much as we care about our patients.”
Manager of Outpatient Programs at Lovelace Women’s Hospital Kym Halliday Clear, RN, BSN, leads a number of health and wellness efforts centered around patients and the community. “The culture created by our CEO Sheri Milone, is that we not only do the right thing at the right time, but also the right way,” she says. “We need to make health care easy, engaging and useful.”
Programs such as Labor of Love reached 4,000 families in 2016, connecting providers and health resources with parents expecting or planning on expecting. Labor of Love membership also comes with special perks including free prenatal, Mommy-and-Me yoga and a family pass to Explora Science Center. “We heard from the community that mothers wanted to get fit and stay on a budget,” says Kym. More than 1,400 families participated in yoga or utilized the Explora family pass. “With this program, we are focused on the before birth to three-year-old population, engaging families while they are still pregnant and through the first three years to maximize their child’s potential.”
Where there is a need and opportunity to make a difference in women’s and children’s health, Kym says Lovelace Women’s Hospital has tailored a program to fit that need. Like Celeste’s internal programs, she encourages the community to take advantage of resources available to be their best selves. “We can’t be our best selves if we don’t take care of ourselves,” she adds. “That means scheduling your annual appointment with your provider, taking 30 minutes to visit with a good friend and not skipping important screenings like your mammogram.”
To learn more about Labor of Love click here. To find a Lovelace provider, contact Care Concierge at 505-727-2727. To learn about current opportunities to work at Lovelace, please click here.