Health and Human Services nurses win Public Health Award

Two Gunnison County Health and Human Services public health nurses, Shonna Gray and Amelia Meyer, were awarded the Exemplary Public Health Nurse Award at the recent Public Health in the Rockies Conference. This award recognizes public health nurses who have demonstrated exemplary care in a local public health agency in a Colorado frontier or rural community.

​Gray and Meyer make a great team. Gray, clinical services manager, is a registered nurse (RN) with 13 years of experience and has worked in many settings, including rural communities, women’s health, labor and delivery, and family planning. Meyer, public health nurse II - family planning coordinator, is an RN of 14 years with experience in acute care and labor and delivery.

“Winning this award recognizes the work that rural public health nurses do and that they have a unique perspective and opportunity. This recognizes our mentality of being efficient while compassionate in providing the same level of patient care delivered in larger systems that the patients in our community deserve," says Shonna Gray. "The teamwork with Amelia comes through in winning this award and goes along with the theme from this year's conference: Stronger Together."

Both nurses have worked in public health for three years at Gunnison County Health and Human Services. They were nominated for this award, which recognizes public health nurses who have demonstrated exemplary care in a local public health agency in a frontier or rural area based on their teamwork in increasing contraceptive access in rural communities. They achieved this through community outreach and rewiring policies using evidence-based frameworks that focus on high quality, patient-centered care in reproductive health.

“Listening to the community is what public health is,” said Gray.

The reproductive health program goes beyond family planning and the prevention of communicable diseases. Their goal is to meet patients, regardless of gender, where they are in their life and help them consider what they see for their future. This includes people actively planning for their families and who want children right now, don’t see a family as part of their future at all, those who don’t want children right now but would like to have a family someday, and those who need treatment for communicable disease.

“The goal is that patients feel supported through providing resources and education to empower them in making decisions for their health,” said Meyer.

Not only does the award recognize the nurses’ teamwork, but it also acknowledges and appreciates the partnerships they have built and the success they’ve seen through them. Importantly, this highlights the unseen effort made in policy writing and the passion to provide high quality care regardless of financial standing.

Meyer and Gray were recognized for increasing contraceptive access through the Colorado RN Nexplanon Pilot program and creating and distributing reproductive health kits. Nexplanon is a long-acting reversible contraceptive device that is placed subdermal and lasts up to 5 years. The pilot program was designed to certify registered nurses in collaboration with practitioners to initiate and place the implant. Gray expressed that supporting nurses practicing at the top of their scope of practice, in collaboration with practitioners, allows for greater access to contraception. The reproductive health kits make contraceptive care items and education more accessible and comfortable for people to take, and makes information and resources available more effectively and sensibly.

Patient privacy remains an important part of patient care across the board. The work includes informed consent, meaning that all patients are provided the options available to meet the patient where they’re at, recognizing that a patient’s care can evolve and change. The program has served as a referral point. Gray and Meyer continue to hold space for patients to be in charge of their own care and empower them to ask questions to understand the options. Patient care for them is not just reproductive health, it’s looking at financial feasibility, lifestyle, de-bunking myths and working through their patients’ fears. Most importantly, they are making sure that their patients are making their own decisions for their health.

Gray, Meyer, and their team will host an outreach event at Western Colorado University on Oct. 28, offering free sexually transmitted infection (STI) screenings from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the University Center. They are partnering with Juvenile Services to organize an educational event for parents in the upcoming year on having productive conversations with teenagers about reproductive health. This program will encourage conversations with parents and promote trusted adult involvement, which has always been a process with adolescent patients. Education on how reproductive biology works is important, but so are social and emotional factors.

More information about the reproductive health program or interest in events can be found by reaching out to Shonna Gray at sgray@gunnisoncounty.org.