Run turns healthcare workers into people on the move

There was a time when walking up a flight of stairs would put Monica Anderson out of breath, when washing a load of laundry would tucker her out to the point of exhaustion. Those where the days when she would come home from work and plop down on the couch, put her feet up and surf the Internet on her laptop.

But you won't find Anderson loafing around her Kalamazoo home anymore. Now, the mother of three is a woman on the move.

Overweight and out-of-shape, Anderson, 38, earlier this year decided to do something about her health, enrolling in the Borgess Run for the Health Of It Run Camp, created as a support network for runners training for one of the events taking place during this year's Borgess Run, May 2-4. Runners of all skill sets participate in the camp, getting ready for everything from 5K and 10K runs all the way up to the full marathon, now in its fourth year.

"At first I said I can't do it. I'm overweight and I can't run," Anderson says. "But I told myself I couldn't think like that. I'm going to get off the couch."

Anderson has worked in the billing department at the Family Health Center for the past eight months, but she's been using the center as her primary healthcare facility since 1992. She was so impressed with the care she has received there that she jumped at the chance to work there, she says.

So when Eileen Chiang, chief financial officer for the health center asked employees if they wanted to represent FHC in the Borgess Run events, Anderson lept aboard. The reason for the request was simple, Chiang says – if employees at the center were asking that patients adopt a healthier lifestyle, workers should be practicing what they preach.

"If someone is a smoker, and you can smell smoke on them as they talk about smoking cessation, you're going to look at them and say, ‘I don't know what you're talking about,'"Chiang says. "It's important for patients to believe in our message of health. In our profession we provide service. You trust in us and our providers, and we have to reflect that with words and actions.

"We encounter a lot of patients due to illnesses resulting from unhealthy lifestyles, such as diabetes or obesity. A lot of our work and effort is to educate them on what they can do to change their lifestyles to be less dependent on medicines.”

For Anderson, that action sometimes included near zero-degree training during snowy runs in February, when the camp began. Huddled in layers of clothes, special shoes and other cold weather gear, she could barely run an eighth of a mile when she started out. Now she can run three miles straight, about the distance of the 5K race she is competing in.
"The first time I did it, it was a euphoric, invigorating feeling,"she says. "I'd never felt like that before.”

The healthier makeover didn't stop with the new-found love of exercise. Lunch and dinner used to consist of fatty take-out meals and sugary drinks, Anderson says. Those have been replaced with lean meats, organic fruits and vegetables, and plenty of water. Over the past 11 weeks of the training program, she has lost 6 pounds and gone from a 10-12 dress size to size 8-10.

She used phone apps like MyFitnessPal and Couch-to-5K to count calories, track meals and develop running and training schedules.  

"I have energy like I never have had before," she says. "I get home from work and I want to do things instead of just lay down.”

The FHC is sponsoring 25 of its employees in this year's run. Nicole Broughton is another one of them.

After receiving high quality care at a FHC medical visit, she pursued employment there. Now she's a medical assistant, and like Anderson, wanted to get healthier. It wasn't easy, but she stuck with it.

  "In the beginning, I could run two minutes, and then have to walk," says Broughton, 32, and also a mother of three. "Then I could go five minutes. I thought there was no way I could do one mile. Now I can do three without stopping."

She believes wholeheartedly in the authoritative dialogue with patients on health that Chiang espouses.

"If people see that I'm not following through on what I'm saying about being healthy, they're not going to take me seriously," Broughton says. "My word is everything."

She's seen the change in patients who have sought out nutritional and other healthy lifestyle counseling at FHC.

"Sometimes I have patients say they've changed – they cut out salt and too much sugar and fat, and then their blood pressure is under control, their diabetes is getting better,"she says. She'd done the same thing,

Both women are excited to lace up their running shoes for the race. It's a day when their training will pay off, but the real race will go on long after they cross the finish line. Living healthy is a life-long endeavor they are both committed to.

 "I am pumped right now. I finally will have accomplished this running thing and will be so proud of myself but know the journey will continue," Anderson says.

Says Broughton, "I'm a little nervous. But I know I have proved so much already."