Making everybody feel loved. | Meeting people where they are. | Helped patients access our services via social media and the new website. | Volunteered at (mostly) all events. | Joining Evergreen has been my happiest professional move in Western New York. | I've been here for four weeks and love it already. Can't wait to work with everybody in 2019. | I smile at everyone all the time. | Made awesome events that celebrated our community. | I respect everyone's life experiences and don't judge because I may be dealing with similar struggles. | Summer's coming. Shine with Evergreen. | Proud to be working at the Evergreen Pharmacy. | I welcome everyone. | I work to make sure that everyone at our events feels welcome and loved. | I gave a lot of high-fives on the Intranet. I love my co-workers! | I tell everyone to have a good day. | I helped patients become more independent. | I try to smile and say hi to everyone. | Non-judgemental. | Always greet everyone with a smile. | I've rocked them all! | I used my face and my story to help someone. | We are authentic and down to Earth. | I celebrated diversity every chance I got. Also, Team Player is my middle name! | I smiled at everyone even when my day wasn't great. | I loved you all. | I will help people find their own life. | Incorporated harm reduction principles to exercise more. | Met patients where they're at. | Welcoming everyone. | I used tact and compassion. | Growing. | Happy to be part of a great team for 19 years! | Came into work with a smile. | Showcased data that paints the picture of how awesome we are. | Help the hurt! | Worked with HRC and Security to bring harm reduction to our safety efforts at Evergreen.
Clockwise from top left: Matt Sydor shops for supplies with Mia, just one of the many dogs available for adoption through Sadie's Safe Harbor Canine Rescue. The Evergreen Safe Shots soccer team (Adam Eisenhauer, Yahya Adam, Josh McClain, Daniel Auflick and Mustafa Abucar) competed in a recent 3-on-3 tournament hosted by the Delaware Soccer Club. Christine Kemp and husband Matt on vacation in Marco Island, Florida. We're totes jelly! Zachary Nappo, Gideon Belin, Jonathon Cooper and Sean Foster attended the Buffalo State LGBTQ Bengal Mixer representing the Pride Center and Emerging Communities. Teresa Lane sent us this adorable photo of Ripley and Bishop, the newest addition to her family. A 22 layer crepe cake? Must be Emma Hathaway's entry in the Western New York Book Arts festival. She and her partner may not have won a prize but Emma says "we sure had fun".
So many great memories. One of my favorites oddly enough
Ok, maybe that's not my best memory but it's certainly the
was AIDS Walk 2017. It was raining and 40 degrees. I was
most dramatic. - John Carocci A Last year, busting a move
wearing my snowboarding jacket in May! On top of that the
and cheering on walkers at the finish line. - Michael Canty A
delivery truck with all our event supplies was two hours late.
AIDS Walk 2018. The picture says it all. I've been a part of the
150 volunteers and staff were standing around in freezing
Walk for some time now. I've raised money, recruited walkers
rain, just waiting. And while I was losing my mind behind
and volunteered. AIDS Walk 2018 is my favorite memory
the scenes, those 150 volunteers and staff were being so
because my family and friends surprised me with my face
patient and kind and wonderful because AIDS Walk means
on their shirts, to show their support and love. I was in awe
so much to them. The truck finally showed up. I didn’t murder
of how blessed and lucky I am to have such a loving family.
the driver, and the event went on as scheduled. I'll always be
Thank you to everyone at Evergreen for all you do for people
thankful for our amazing volunteers. - Rob Baird A This is
like me that live with HIV. Without your love and support
tough! My favorite memory of AIDS Walk is looking out and
and the hard work you do my life would be harder to bear.
seeing all our amazing Evergreen staff share this special event
I also want to thank everyone that takes part in putting this
together. Thank you for your amazing support over the years!
event together. I understand the long hours and hard work
- Rachel Voelkle-Kuhlmann A The year we had a tornado
it takes to pull it off. You guys rock because you manage to
watch on the day of the Walk, and the wind was so strong it
do it. - Liza Pereira (thank you Liza and daughter Crystal
tipped over a porta-potty and pushed it across Niagara Square.
Pereira Finley for the great Walk photos on the next page!)
We need your help! It takes hundreds of volunteers to make the Pride Parade and Festival a success. All volunteers receive a t-shirt and free entry into the Pride Festival. We especially would love your help with traffic control at the Pride Parade and with admissions and selling food and drink tickets at the Pride Festival. We also welcome your friends and family to join us in volunteering as well! Contact Rachel Voelkle-Kuhlmann, Volunteer and Event Coordinator, for more information or to sign up. And, mark your calendars! Dining Out For Life will be taking place this year on Tuesday, October 1! On this day, more than 80 generous restaurants across WNY will donate 25-100% of their bill back to support the programs and services of Evergreen Health. All you have to do is donate your appetite! Stay tuned for more details as the date gets closer!
International Transgender Day of Visibility (TDOV) is held around the world each year on March 31. TDOV celebrates transgender people and recognizes the accomplishments and victories of transgender and gender non-conforming people. It also raises awareness of the work still to be done to save trans lives. TDOV was established in 2009 in response to the lack of LGBT holidays celebrating transgender people’s successes. The Pride Center hosted TDOV events on Friday, March 29 and Saturday, March 30, featuring light refreshments, music and a live discussion with community members of trans experience. The panel answered questions, gave feedback about discrimination and misconceptions, and responded to comments submitted in advance from the community. More than 75 individuals attended over the two days. More importantly, TDOV raised awareness about the trans community. In continuation of TDOV, the Pride Center team hosted a screening of America in Transition at Evergreen Commons. America in Transition is a documentary series exploring relationships, community and social issues among trans people of color. - Cyndie Viet Phi Huynh
At Evergreen, we pride ourselves on being an evidence-based, data-driven organization. It’s important that all of us understand how we use data in our day-to-day work to improve outcomes. The IS team is happy to launch #NerdAlert, a new monthly feature in Connections to educate you about all things data. We’ll talk about different types of data, the tools we use to analyze data and so much more! Our goal is to make our data more accessible and useful to everyone. We want to start off by presenting you with some commonly used terms we use the in the data world. It’s important that we all understand what these terms mean so we can communicate effectively. Let’s start with the following four key terms: metric, reporting, report and key performance indicator or KPI. Metric: a term referring to a measurement of any kind. Usually a number telling us what happened. All key performance indicators (KPIs) are represented by metrics, but not all metrics are KPIs! Reporting: the process of organizing data into informational summaries in order to monitor how different areas of business are performing. Report: usually formatted in a list, to summarize information. Reports are distributed regularly and often used by employees to help support their work. Key Performance Indicator (KPI): measures progress towards a desired result. You could say this is a Super Important Metric. A KPI is a metric that represents performance. It always has a goal or objective and measures our progress towards it. There should be a clear data source so there's no question of what is being measured or tracked, and it is reported on frequently. KPIs can measure the success of an individual, a department, or the whole organization. A good KPI inspires action - What is the objective? Does it have meaningful outcomes? Is there a goal to this? How will you measure that objective / progress? Can I influence this measure? #NerdAlert continues on the next page
Dashboard: offers at-a-glance monitoring of business objectives and goals (such as KPIs). It's primarily visual and often offers interactive features. Here are two examples of KPIs: Primary & Specialty Care Patient Wait Time: a KPI would be a clearly defined wait time goal and metric tracking the current average waiting room time. There may even be multiple metrics tracking different waiting room times to compare locations. There can also be less obvious measures that impact this KPI - for instance, certain times of day or days of the week being busier, how many people are on staff, etc. These are all different metrics that can be measured and used to more fully understand this KPI. A report would summarize one set of data related to this KPI - such as a report of all the patients seen on a given day of the week at one location. High Risk Patient Care: seeing high risk patients more frequently can reduce unnecessary hospitalization. Our goal is to see 90 percent of high risk patients within a three month window. The KPI would share information about how many patients we were seeing in a three month window, with a clearly defined number. A KPI Dashboard would provide a data visualization for how close we are to this goal. We would use a dashboard like this to track how frequently we see our high risk patients, as well as show how close we were to the goals and relevant information to improving this. Metrics on the dashboard could show how many high risk patients we have, and how many we have seen in the last three months. Reporting on this would be a summary/list telling us how many high risk patients we have that have not been seen in the past 3 months, so that we can use this data to improve our performance on a KPI. If you have questions or comments about any of the things discussed in this edition of #NerdAlert, email bernard@evergreenhs.org. See you next month! - Heather Wilson
A Alex McGann
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A Amy Usiak
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A Arica Rouse
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A Bridget McClain
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A Cathleen Niedermayer
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A Gerrod Bennett
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Jasmine Padilla
A Melissa Murray
Jillian Fanning
A Michael Blasdell
Jonathan Cooper
A Mike Lee
Joseph Pignatora
A Mike Ludwick
Julie Mayer
A Mimi Danso
Julie Rapp
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Justin Azzarella
A Rachel Voelkle-Kuhlmann
Kaily Golba
A Rob Baird
Kayleen Coleman
A Robert Smith
Kelly Thompson
Luann Bogdan
Connections May 2019
Publisher/Layout John Carocci
A Sashira Quintana A Suzanne Weessies
Magali Maldonado
A Theodore Wilson
Maggie Barnett
A Theresa Woehrel
Matt Edson
A Zachary Nappo
Copy Editor Amy Usiak
Contributors Jocelyn Leising Melissa Delgado Kristen O'Connor Heather Wilson Ekua Mends-Aidoo Cyndie Viet Phi Huynh Connections is the official monthly newsletter for the employees and Board members of the Evergreen Association and its affilliates (aka you). Please send us your story ideas, photos, feedback, or just a friendly hello to Evergreen Connections via Outlook. Thank you!
D
iversity, equity and inclusion aren't just buzz
(term used by US Census), up from one in six today. This
words at Evergreen. I’ll bet you’ve heard the
population will more than double, to 128 million.
terms thrown around in various forms and
•
contexts. Is this "the new thing”? Are there
and ethnically diverse generation the U.S. has ever known.
The Millennial Generation is the largest, most racially
mandates we have to keep? Are there benefits to adopting
•
policies around diversity, equity and inclusion? These are
percent, or 62 million people by 2060.
some of the questions we hope to answer through stories
• The Asian American population will double to 34
and examples in Connections, staff trainings and larger staff
million by 2060, 8.2 percent of the total population.
engagement in general. The short answer is, yes. There have
• The number of international migrants is expected to
been many studies proving the importance of adopting
grow by 41 million.
such policies and how they result in competitive advantages
• The U.S. population is aging. By 2060, the number
for a business or organization. Our goal is to bring direct
of Americans age 65 and over is expected to double to 92
examples of how you can incorporate these ideas into your
million. Those 85 and older will number about 18 million, 4.3
role at Evergreen, CAS or the Pride Center, and why it's
percent of the overall population.
important to do so. One of the first things to consider is the
change in demographics in the United States. Consider these
and with those changes come challenges, and, more
statistics from the United States Census Bureau:
importantly, opportunities for growth. In the healthcare
•
Minority populations will become the majority in the
industry it's essential to pay attention to cultural differences
United States by 2044. However, no single group will make
which affects how people seek care and where they receive
up a majority. Non-Hispanic white population will remain
their health information. Through the lens of healthcare, we
the largest group, but by 2060, minorities as a whole are
can see why paying attention to the changing demographics
projected to make up 57 percent of the population, up from
within our country can be beneficial. We want to make
37 percent today.
sure we're in a place to provide access to the level of care our
•
patients will continue to need.
By 2060, nearly one in three Americans will be Hispanic
The percentage of black Americans will increase to 14.7
As you can see, our nation’s demographics are shifting,
- Ekua Mends-Aidoo
Clockwise from top left: Krista Orrange's daughter Veda is a year old. Cake incoming! Matthew Crehan Higgins shared this photo of Evergreen representing at SYNChronicity 2019: the National Conference on HIV, Hepatitis C, STIs and LGBT Health in Washington, DC. Shown here are Michael Lecker of Trillium Health, Nick Azzopardi, Matthew Crehan Higgins and Mike Lee. Corinne Miosi, Alyssa Shon, MD and Lori Anthony, RN contributed to the materials presented at the event. Great job, everyone! Inda Quinones shared a snap of moms-to-be Ginger Smith and Kristen Bechdel. Congratulations! Oops, we're not done. Inda sent this photo of new mom Veronica Velazquez, as well. Justin Azzarella, Rob Baird, Emma Fabian, Ekua Mends-Aidoo and Damian Mordecai took part in a brown bag panel lunch discussion at UB's LGBTQ Faculty and Staff Association. Dawn Trotter attended a CQII Training on Coaching Basics in Dallas, designed to help participants build their capacity to coach other HIV providers to better their quality improvement programs.
Birthdays Christina Radice............................May 2 Jerome Robinson...........................May 3 Megan Bingham............................May 4 Robert Smith.................................May 6 Jennifer Cheatom..........................May 7 Luann Bogdan...............................May 7 Taleha Ojeda.................................May 8 Santos Martinez............................May 10 Brittany Hesson.............................May 11 Rebecca Clark...............................May 12 Rosalind Townsend.......................May 13 Emma Fabian................................May 13 Michael Blasdell............................May 14 Matthew Sydor..............................May 16 Natalie Jackson.............................May 17 Angela Torrie................................May 17 Ann Edmunds...............................May 19 Kyle Botsford.................................May 20 Adria Reed....................................May 24 Brittany Miller...............................May 24 Kate Walker...................................May 24 Alyssa Shon...................................May 25 Roosevelt Terry.............................May 25 Grant Rogers.................................May 27 Zachary Nappo..............................May 28 Harry Berkoh-Asamoah.................May 31 Helene Cacciato............................May 31
Anniversaries Shondra Brown.............................1 Year Jermane Nauden...........................1 Year Wanda Gonzalez............................1 Year Katherine Marrero........................1 Year Kaitlyn Hamm...............................1 Year Kayleen O'Halloran........................1 Year Christine DeVoe............................2 Years Brittany Hesson.............................2 Years Corrin LaVigne..............................2 Years Lori Anthony.................................2 Years Kate Walker...................................3 Years Elijah Jimerson.............................3 Years LaTanya Walton-Brown..................3 Years Ricardo Quiros..............................3 Years Robert Baird.................................4 Years Jamie Keuck..................................6 Years Theresa Woehrel...........................7 Years Julie Vaughan................................9 Years Theresa Shankland........................13 Years Cornelia Meredith.........................13 Years
Caring for Transgender and Gender Diverse Patients is a training brought to you by Dr. Kyan Lynch with Clinical Education Initiative (CEI). During this interactive, two-hour session, participants will learn about caring for gender diverse patients, with emphasis placed on developing new skills and behaviors to help create an affirming space for patients of all genders. There will be two different sessions offered on Friday, May 10, 2019. Session times will be from 10 a.m. - 12 p.m. and 2 p.m. - 4 p.m. in the Evergreen Commons Sanctuary. Registration can be done through CEI.
Laurie Matson...............................15 Years
Clockwise from top left: work continues on our beautiful new balconies! Ekua Mends-Aidoo and Mike Lee were guest bartenders at the Evergreen Happy Hour at Chocolate Bar to benefit AIDS Walk Buffalo 2019. Members of Evergreen's Drug User Health Coalition helped Emma Fabian give a presentation at the Community Level Strategies: Confronting the Opioid Epidemic conference in April. Michael Canty takes a delegation from Spain on a tour of Evergreen. The group was visiting the United States through the State Department's International VIsitors Leadership Program. They represent various Spanish LGBTQ organizations and were here to learn about how we promote PrEP and Undetectable (they're in the process of adding PrEP to their national healthcare system).