Elizabeth Bailey, CDMP, Development and Communications Manager
At Mountain Family Health Centers, our Guiding Principles help us create a welcoming and warm work environment and patient-centered culture. “Diversity” at Mountain Family looks like “evolving into a more equitable, just, and inclusive organization” for employees, patients, and our community. Everyone is welcome through our doors, and we are accepting of all backgrounds here.
Anneliese Heckert, DO, Co-Chief Medical Officer and Glenwood Springs Site Medical Director shared that for our patients “we have continued to focus on expanding our inclusive language and looking at how we can make our spaces, electronic health record, meetings, and overall culture more inclusive. We’ve added desired pronouns to the top of everyone’s chart so that is front and center when we talk with patients.” Additionally, several providers have attended gender affirming care lectures from a variety of sources in the last few months. If you are a patient at Mountain Family, know that your providers are trained to listen, sympathize, and help support you through your entire journey.
Our Human Resources department has focused on advancing the knowledge of the LGBTQ+ community with our entire staff to foster and support an inclusive workplace culture. Mountain Family supervisors participate in monthly trainings to grow our staffs’ knowledge and proficiencies across a variety of topics. In March, Theo Izos (they/them/theirs) from Colorado Sexual Health Initiative at the Colorado Department of Human Services (CDHS) joined our supervisor training to focus on building gender affirming practices, covering “transgender, non-binary, and gender-expansive identities and experiences as well as gender-affirming healthcare and caregiving and the rights and best-practices for supporting gender-expansive youth.” Additionally, all staff participate in an LGBTQIA+ Health training through the National LGBTQIA+ Health Education Center during their first week of work at Mountain Family.
If you have more questions on our inclusive care practices, please reach out at contact@mountainfamily.org.