Fort Worth, Texas, United States
I am a Licensed Professional Counselor who has spent my career designing, implementing, and testing evidence-based behavioral interventions for wellness and chronic condition management. I have spent most of my career working with informal caregivers of persons with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias to help them address common challenge managing the care situation while maintaining their own health and wellbeing. Over that time, I have worked in a variety of settings including inpatient, non-profit, academic research, and employee benefits providers. I really enjoy training new interventionists and have developed training materials and certified Dementia Care Specialists throughout the U.S.. I am also a certified Project Management Professional and enjoy enabling teams with the right level of organization and structure to unlock their potential.
I currently serve as technical program manager for the Data Science and Health Economics teams at Transcarent. Reporting to the CTO, part of my work relates to facilitating execution of department strategy by developing tools, templates, and best practices for workflow management and documentation. I also serve as our Data Lead which includes managing data vendor relationships and documenting/tracking various data sources throughout the organization to best leverage value of our data assets.
In my time at BSWH I have managed several projects related to the development and testing of behavioral health interventions in healthcare and community-based settings, most directly with family caregivers of persons with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias. My background as a Licensed Professional Counselor has also been useful in serving as subject matter expert and clinical lead for many projects. I have also been fortunate to do some consulting with community nonprofits as they are looking to implement and improve their evidence-based program offerings. Many of my projects have had a significant technical or data component, and I have used those opportunities to develop skills in those areas.
E4 Health was an integrated healthcare management company that brought employee assistance and wellness benefits together to address member psychosocial issues and chronic health conditions and deliver savings to its client organizations. It has since been acquired by New Directions Behavioral Health. I had the opportunity to serve as the business analyst on the development team redesigning HealthMap, the organization's case management platform that integrated health risk assessment data, biometric results, and medical/pharmacy claims data to stratify the member population by risk for proactive outreach. I became experienced not only with Agile Scrum, but also with requirements documentation/sprint board management in Jira/Confluence.
at E4 Health, members interacted with live mental health clinicians who help assess the member, provide support, and provide referrals to available services. Reporting to the SVP of Operations, I provided analysis and reporting of KPI's in a call center setting. I worked with clinical supervisors and account management staff to resolve member complaints in a timely fashion. A signification portion of the position was also dedicated to staff training and training material development. My work contributed to a 26% decrease in overflow rates, one of our primary performance metrics.
At E4 Health, trained mental health clinicians provided assessment, support, and referrals to available services. I was in a customer-facing role providing psychological assessment and brief supportive interventions in a call center setting . I utilized motivational interviewing techniques and brief solution-focused interventions before referring the member to other available services. I also helped launch the wellness product lines and contributed to protocol and workflow development to conduct targeted outreach of members. I was consistently recognized for excellent customer service, leadership skills, and counseling acumen.
As part of Scott & White Program on Aging and Care, I conducted implementation research focused on translation of the REACH II dementia caregiver skills-training intervention by recruiting participants and conducting in-home intervention sessions with dozens of caregivers. I assisted with grant-writing and protocol/product development to adapt an intervention to an automated, computer-based delivery system. I also developed comprehensive intervention training materials and conducted several trainings throughout Texas.
At the Alzheimer's Association North Central Texas Chapter, I provided in-home counseling, guidance, and education services for hundreds of family care-givers of persons with dementia according to the Resources for Enhancing Alzheimer's Caregiver Health II (REACH II) model through grant from United Way/Area Agency on Aging of Tarrant County. REACH II is an evidence-based intervention with a large foundation of research supporting its efficacy in addressing caregiver depression and burden.