Our Chief Health Officer, Cheryl Baggeroer Turner, shared her thoughts on #mentalhealthawareness month and all the amazing work our Care Team is doing to meet member needs now and always. Check it out! ⤵ 💜
I was lucky enough to be a psychiatry resident at the University of Washington while Wayne Katon was an attending and developing the research base behind the Collaborative Care Model. I was an intern when I heard him first explain the connections between depression, pain, and diabetes. His conclusion was simple: mental health is health — we can’t improve one without the other. It is not an understatement to say that that first lecture years ago had me hooked and I have been on a journey to integrate mental health and physical health ever since. There is no longer a debate that the mind and body are connected, but we still have a long way to go to create a functioning healthcare system that allows for true integration. I am proud to be trying to move this needle with the work we are doing at Caraway, and as Mental Health Awareness Month comes to a close, I want to share some examples of what our integration looks like: 💜Our Director of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine and eating disorder expert, Sara Levine, MD, MPH discusses diet culture and nutrition with our Caraway Crew, and consults with our therapists about eating-disordered behaviors in their patients. 💊Our Director of Women’s Health, Emily Birenbaum, MD talks with patients about what birth control options work best for their body and their moods, and never shies away from addressing news topics that leave women feeling confused about what information to trust. 🛟Our Lead Nurse Practitioner, Danielle Dexter MS, FNP-C, champions our Collaborative Care model and shares with other primary care clinicians how much her knowledge of mental health diagnoses and psychotropic prescribing helps her entire clinical practice. ♻️Our Behavioral Health Director, Soomie Kim, asks about physical concerns with all her patients, often identifying symptoms like fatigue and migraines, and coordinates regular huddles with our medical clinicians to ensure we are addressing all aspects our patients’ health. 🌞Our Lead Psychologist and ADHD expert, Julia Baron, PsyD, works with patients to connect the dots between their struggles with focus and concentration and sleep, nutrition, exercise, and smartphone usage, then comes up with a treatment plan to help get them back on track. 🗺️Our Health Advisors, Savannah Becker and Laura Hollander, help our patients navigate our incredibly complex and stressful healthcare system and teach them invaluable health agency skills along the way. 💜And finally, our Head of Care Operations, Whitney Mirro, ensures Caraway is a supportive and enjoyable place for our clinicians to work, because to care well for patients you have to feel well-cared for yourself. Mental health shows up in so many different ways. It’s not confined to just one month of the year which is why we’re passionate about helping our patients see how it shows up in all areas of their lives and then working with them to find ways to feel better.
