How To Use Goals To Help Your Staff Succeed

/in /by

Helping your employees set and reach goals is a critical part of your job as a supervisor or program manager. Setting and reaching goals is also important to you staff, who needs to see how their work fits in with the larger objectives of your agency. Taking the time to work with them to set targets helps them understand how they’re part of the organization and will positively affect their performance.

Setting up this kind of regular goals check-in on can feel like a lot of pressure, especially if you’re dealing with a new hire or a person who’s bee on staff for a while.

Fortunately, going through this process at regular intervals is helps you do your job more easily. It gives you a framework that helps you organize your time and tasks, and establishes benchmarks that will help drive your whole team. You’ll find this especially useful if you work as part of a multidisciplinary team or some of your workers are out with clients most of the time.

Goal-setting such as this helps you all work better together and gives you a concrete instrument for giving feedback day to day and during annual reviews. Setting targets and keeping an eye on them, means you can give your staff input on their performance at any time–while you’re motivating them do more.

Read on to see some best practices for using goal-setting as a way to help your team succeed.

Set goals together—then get out of the way

Working together on setting those goals is important. If your staff doesn’t meet them, it has negative consequences for them, you, your agency, and possibly even your community. So you really need to get involved in helping employees set and meet goals.

Plus, collaborative involvement pays off. Staff members who are told what goals to pursue don’t fare as well as those who explore along with their managers. That leads to a lower job performance.

A top-down approach can leave someone at a loss for why or how their goals fit in. Or they might lack the confidence to meet them. If staff work with you to set goals and decide what strategies they’ll use to meet them will perform better and have higher confidence.

So collaborating at first makes sense, but then step back and let your team get to work. That’s a manager’s job: enable, support, and then provide a boost when necessary, depending on your staff’s capabilities.

Fill gaps with learning goals

What kinds of goals you set with your staff depends largely on what they do and your agency’s requirements. Those might be tied to data or quality improvement outcomes that are measured by numbers.

Once you set them, then look at what might make them more difficult to reach. In many cases, there could be a training gap. The gap might be:

  1. Individual. If one person lacks the skills to complete a task, they have an individual training gap. For example your new hire needs to do community outreach for your agency, but they don’t have any outreach skills.
  2. Team. Your whole team might lack skills to carry out an initiative, so they have a team learning gap. An example almost everyone can relate to is setting up new protocols for Covid-19.
  3. Organizational. Entire agencies sometimes have a gap in an area and have an organizational learning gap. Many organizations recognize they have gaps in cultural competency and have needed to supplement training in that area.

Conducting a training needs assessment is a critical step when you’re on the path to a goal. You’ll need to know where your team excels and where they need more help. Then, you can acquire new training—either create your own custom training or buy it off the shelf–to help everyone reach goals.

Learning goals might even reach into the future, and they can dovetail nicely with personal goals of your team. You can ask your employees what they’d like to learn in the next month, quarter, or year, and then provide them with training opportunities to get there.

Set regular intervals for goal review

Once you have your goals set with your team, set in a structure to monitor them. Do this early on, and you’ll be glad you did. Checking in early and regularly can help reveal problems before they get too big. Why wait to review goals until a set check-in? Make a habit of reviewing them every week as part of your employee check-in.

Here are some helpful performance review templates you can adapt to your goal reviews:

Why Teaching About Health Disparities Transforms Communities

/in /by

By Kellie Woodson

As an instructional designer, I use my expertise in teaching and learning to create learning experiences on a wide variety of health topics. Whether I’m developing a course on breast cancer genetics or oral health, a significant part of the process is partnering with experts in the field to develop courses that are informative, engaging and effective.  Since many of these courses are written for frontline health workers, they must also motivate participants to make positive changes in their communities.

Overcoming Barriers to Healthy Choices

A typical course not only provides information on health conditions; it also teaches strategies to effectively guide others in making healthier choices. To do this, it is important to acknowledge the barriers to healthy living that many people face.

For example, we know that regular health checks and healthy eating are important to overall health. But the truth is, getting to the doctor or grocery store can be very difficult for individuals who are disabled, elderly, or who live in rural areas.

The courses I write challenge participants to acknowledge and reflect on the realities of others that they might otherwise take for granted. How does a person who struggles to get around their own home travel to regular doctor’s visits? How can a person make healthier food choices if they only have access to neighborhood convenience stores?  Does the disproportionate number of tobacco advertisements in low-income communities affect smoking rates in these areas? How does one’s education level affect their ability to complete an application for financial healthcare assistance?

How does a person who struggles to get around their own home travel to regular doctor’s visits? [Tweet this]

The truth is that for many individuals, factors such as age, disability, geographical location and education level pose significant barriers to staying healthy. These barriers in turn give rise to health disparities, or preventable differences in the rate of disease and access to health services among specific groups of people.  While health disparities can and do affect all people, they are more common among minorities and the socio-economically disadvantaged.

When writing a tobacco cessation course for the state of Washington’s Community Health Worker Training program, I learned that African Americans, Asian Americans, members of the LGBT community and American Indians use tobacco products in disproportionate numbers when compared to other groups in Washington.

Across the nation, individuals with lower income and education levels are also more likely to use tobacco.  These disparities then give rise to tobacco-related illness and disease. Due to the lack of quality health care, individuals living in rural areas, those who are living at or below the poverty line and those who have lower education levels are more likely to die as a result of tobacco-related disease.

Health Disparities Reach Farther Than You Think

It’s important to understand that health disparities aren’t simply the result of groups of people making bad choices. Disparities are systemic, complex and cyclical in nature. For example, groups of people who migrated to the U.S. have been found to have high rates of mental disorder and trauma due to the hardships they experienced during migration.  Racism and oppression often result in trauma-related mental illness. To make matters worse, marginalized groups of people often avoid diagnosis and treatment which further perpetuates these disparities. Consider these statistics:

  • Asian-American women over age 65 have the highest suicide rate of all similarly-aged women in the United States.
  • LGBT youth are about 2 1/2 times more likely to attempt suicide than their peers.
  • Only about ten percent of physicians practice in rural America.
  • People who live and work in low socioeconomic circumstances have an increased risk for mortality, unhealthy behaviors, reduced access to health care and low quality of care.
  • Due to trauma experienced before and after immigration to the United States, Southeast Asian refugees have an increased risk for posttraumatic stress disorder.
  • Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders are 30 percent more likely to be diagnosed with cancer than whites.
  • Close to a third of Hispanics get regular health care, including those with chronic health conditions.
  • African-American adults with cancer are significantly less likely to survive prostate cancer, breast cancer and lung cancer than their white counterparts.

These alarming statistics only represent a small fraction of the disparities that exist in our country. Remember that health disparities are found in every group in the U.S. and in every part of the body.

Frontline Health Workers and Communities

Being a frontline health worker is not just about giving guidance and advice– it’s a call to action and advocacy. These people and their employers their community members better than anyone else, and they understand the communities’ challenges, weaknesses and strengths.  As they educate and guide clients to achieving better health, they have the responsibility to acknowledge barriers to care and why they exist. This understanding will help them to better anticipate their client’s needs and respond appropriately and effectively.

Frontline health workers take different paths to solving problems. Many take it upon themselves to create much needed resources and programs in their communities. Others see themselves as organizers who unite members of the community to create solutions where none exist. Whatever the response, you are in the position to make a tremendous impact.

At the end of the day, the goal is to build communities where race, sex, sexual identity, age, disability or socioeconomic status never, ever affect one’s ability to be healthy.

Kellie Woodson is an expert in teaching, learning, and instructional design with content area specialization in health, science, and mathematics. She has extensive experience developing curriculum and learning programs for schools, organizations, and national and international publishers. 

Originally published August 16, 2016, updated October 23, 2020.

How Stereotypes Are Bad for Your Health

/in /by

Think you’re immune to stereotyping the people in your community? That you never notice a person’s skin color, what they’re wearing, what their gender is?

Then look at this cartoon and think about your reaction:

It comes via the article “The Bubbles Inside Our Heads,” by Marilyn Gardner, educator, nurse, trainer, thinker, “third-culture kid” (and sometimes Talance collaborator) who writes about culture and sometimes health care on her blog Communicating Across Boundaries.

It’s a great article that examines what happens when we get caught up by our stereotypes, particularly those about muslims, and how that affects our work in neighborhoods, workplaces, and health centers.

To get a sense of the article and how these thoughts can be bad for community health, here are some excerpts from Marilyn, originally published on her blog:

“The problem with stereotypes is not that they are incorrect; it’s that they are incomplete.”

The cartoon characters have formed opinions based on stereotypes. Neither of them are capable of complexity, of seeing beyond the surface and trying to understand each other. It’s an excellent cartoon showing the great divide between cultures and the danger of stereotyping.

I call this picture “The Great Divide.” There is this chasm separating these two that has far more to do with the bubbles inside their heads than reality. Indeed, research tells us that if they did get to know each other, they may find they may have much in common.

…

If we are honest with ourselves, we will recognize that much of the time we are like this cartoon. We live according to the bubbles inside our heads. None of us are immune. We form opinions and assumptions based on our cultural values, our religious views, our socioeconomic status, the media we listen to, watch or read, our countries of origin, the countries that adopted us, the families in which we were raised, and the list could go on.

Bubbles aren’t inherently bad — often they help us to make good choices; but other times they prevent us from seeing people as they really are. They float down through our brains and cloud our vision.

My African American friends often fall victim to head bubbles. At one time, the director of my program was an African American woman raised in Ohio and transplanted to the East Coast. She was amazing and had degrees after her name that I could only dream about. But no matter where it was, when she walked into a new doctor’s office or clinic, immediately the person behind the desk asked for her Medicaid card. The bubbles above their heads told them that she was black, so she was poor. She was black, so she must have public assistance in everything from food to insurance.

…

The challenge is to be aware of them, to recognize them for what they are: stereotypes and biases that are rooted in our subconscious, and must be recognized and confronted.

Originally published July 06, 2016, updated October 23, 2020.

Susan G. Komen Uses Talance to Empower New Patient Navigators

/in /by

Timing is everything when it comes to breast cancer. Early screening and detection can save a life, and dealing with a diagnosis requires knowing what to expect and when. Susan G. Komen knows all this, and they also know that patient navigator training for breast cancer is the key to improving outcomes in detection and treatment.

The challenge is making sure those navigators have access to the right training to improve the quality of care among patients in underserved communities.

“Many [patient navigators] lack specific training in breast health and/or cancer and/or navigation itself,” says Julie McMahon, director of mission at the Susan G. Komen affiliate in Columbus, Ohio. 

The patient navigator online training program at Ohio’s Susan G. Komen Columbus improves the quality of care for women receiving abnormal screening results with 100 percent satisfaction for participants. The organization’s ultimate goal is to reduce the number of women who fail to follow up on treatment and improve outcomes.

McMahon’s program launched an elearning program to improve skills among patient navigators around the state. You can read more details in the case study, but here are three top takeaways you can apply to your own program right now:

1. Balance independence and collaboration.

The people who signed up for Komen’s program distributed all around the state—and Ohio is a big one, with remote pockets. It ranges from urban areas like Cincinnati to remote Appalachian counties.

Bringing everyone together for three months for training is a realistic impossibility, so the solution was to offer courses online, and then supplement learning with plenty of opportunities for collaboration. So, while people worked independently most of the time, they came together for key events, namely:

  • “Meeting” each other during a live kickoff webinar
  • Talking about weekly assignments in discussion forums
  • Concluding the training program with a live conference call featuring case presentations

This mix allowed patient navigators the flexibility to work when it suited them (at work, at home, during breaks from seeing patients). It also gave them opportunities to ask each other questions, check in with the expert facilitator and create a collaborative learning environment.

2. Let people learn from each other.

Collaboration was an important part of the training program, because it opened up the doors for peer-based learning. Participants in the program had a wide range of experience: some were brand new at their jobs with little experience, and others were veteran nurses who had years of on-the-job experience. Many of them had personally faced breast cancer challenges and were driven to help others who find themselves in similar situations.

Creating opportunities for participants to talk to each other on calls and write to each other in forums let them share experiences and build off the basic skills that were in the course.

This is where many self-guided learning programs—those where participants click through screen after screen—fail. If everyone is working independently all of the time, they never learn tips and tricks that their coworkers have discovered. This collaboration is particularly useful in jobs like patient navigation, where community partners and resources are so valuable to clients and patients.

3. Find the right topics for the job.

The evaluations that came out of Komen Columbus’s program had extremely high ratings. People said they were 95 percent satisfied with the program and they found that 100 percent of what they learned was relevant to their job.

The moral? If you want training that sticks, make darn sure it’s relevant. It makes for happier participants who can immediately take what they learn and  apply it to their job.

In this case, the program covered these training modules:

  • How to learn online and introduction webinar
  • Organizational and documentation skills
  • Disparities and social determinants of health
  • Assessment skills
  • Breast Continuum of Care (from intro and diagnosis methods to treatment and survivorship)
  • Navigating Health Insurance
  • Service Coordination
  • Breast Cancer Genetics and Genomics
  • Health Coaching and Motivational Interviewing
  • Resources, wrap-up and case presentation

Follow these smart practices to any program you have, and you have a much higher chance of making it a success.

Want to learn more? Read about how their online training program was created.

Originally published June 22, 2016, updated October 23, 2020.

How to Actually Succeed at Behavior Change

/in /by

Here’s a harsh bit of reality for you: there is no magical method to making healthy lifestyle changes. Fad diets and exercise crazes might make it seem like there is, but they’re wrong. Sad news for the members of your community who want to change thier behavior.

The truth is that the secret to meeting overall health recommendations, from quitting smoking to getting more exercise, is to put one foot in front of the other–and keep doing it. Changing the way you live is simply hard. It just is.

However, there is one technique that actually can make that tough transition easier: setting SMART goals.

SMART Goals

SMART goals break down any task that seems too big to meet by breaking it down into what’s Specific (S) about the goal, how you can Measure (M) it, making it Achievable (A), and also Realistic (R) or Relevant, and setting up a Timeline (T) to complete it.

We talk about SMART goals all the time in our health education materials because they are so effective.  They make big lifestyle changes more manageable.

For example, think about someone who feels overwhelmed by a new diagnosis of hypertension. Their doctor tells them they need to exercise more and lose weight. They might start thinking “I have to run a marathon!” even though they’ve never walked further than the mailbox, or “I need to lose 20 pounds this month!” without considering what needs to change in their diet. Those goals are discouraging and impossible to achieve–a real setback for successful self-management.

Now, when you put a goal like “exercise more” into a SMART format, it changes from “run a marathon” to “walk around the block twice this week.” The difference is huge and makes behavior change something that most people can actually do.

SMART Goals and Behavior Change

Here are some examples of how SMART goals work with different health motivations. To take a SMART approach, they answer these questions (copy them down so you can use them with yourself or a client today):

  • What is Specific about the goal?
  • How will you Measure the goal to know it’s been achieved?
  • Is it Achievable?
  • Is the goal Realistic?
  • Is the goal on a Timeline?

Hypertension

Unspecific goal: “Follow the DASH diet.” The DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) is a diet that many health providers recommend to patients.

SMART approach: “This week I will eat two cups of fruits and vegetables with dinner and lunch.”

Exercise

Unspecific goal: “Get healthy.” This very fuzzy goal is all too common among people who are trying to build more physical activity into their lives.

SMART approach: “I will meet with a mall walking group on Saturday morning.”

Dieting

Unspecific goal: “Lose 40 pounds.” Many people know they need to lose weight, and even how much, but that’s difficult without a path.

SMART approach: “This month I will lose 5 percent of my current weight. This will allow me to meet my goal by the end of the year.”

Smoking

Unspecific goal: “Stop smoking.” This is a common and clear directive. People need to stop but don’t know how.

SMART approach: “Tomorrow I will replace all the ashtrays in the house with a pack of Nicorette gum.”

Drinking Alcohol

Unspecific goal: “I shouldn’t drink so much.” Breaking through the habit of drinking is hard without a plan.

SMART approach: “I will pick two days this week when I won’t drink.”

Do you see how these short goals seem like something you can do? Meeting one goal makes it easier to move on to a new one. And that is the secret to better health: one step at a time.

Free Ebook: America’s Walking Renaissance

/in /by

Everybody knows they need to exercise more and eat less. They probably even know that getting some physical activity—even walking for 20 minutes—can reduce the chance of getting diseases like heart disease and hypertension, controlling stress and keeping the brain engaged. Plus, studies show that people who spend more time each day sitting (watching TV, driving around or sitting at a desk) are more likely to die early than those who don’t.

That’s all real. We know it, and that’s why we promote health in the communities where we live and work. But then the unrealisitc excuses kick in. That you have to run a marathon to be in shape. That you have to exercise by yourself. That you’ll never be able to fit in another thing with work, school, family…whatever's taking up time.

We need to correct that and show people that you can see real health gains by taking a short walk, and that getting any exercise is better than none.

America’s Walking Renaissance

You don’t have to take my word for it. Listen to Heidi Simon and her colleagues at America Walks and the Every Body Walk! Collaborative, who just released a new (free!) book: America’s Walking Renaissance.

America's Walking Renaissance

“America’s Walking Renaissance is a journey across the US, taking a look at walkable cities of all shapes and sizes and providing resources and information on the growing walking movement,” Simon said in an email interview. “From Phoenix to Birmingham to Northeast Iowa, we look at how the US is taking steps towards walkability and look at lessons [from] other communities.”

She, along with Jay Walljasper and Kate Kraft, spent more than a year interviewing, researching and visiting locations all around the States to document successful walking programs. The aim in this project is to share information along with actionable tips, so more organizations and health educators can spark walking programs where they are.

Successful Walking Programs to Copy

A few examples from the free ebook:

Vision Zero, active in more than a dozen cities to reduce the number of walkers who are killed when crossing the street. Vision Zero pushes campaigns through local law enforcement and public education.

Better Bridges Bash, in St. Paul, MN, which puts on street parties in urban environments that are bisected by freeway bridges and overpasses.

Arlington, VA, a success story among suburban cities. Arlington has been named the most walkable suburb in the country. The city transformed itself over years, revamping everything from sidewalk space to accessibility of stores.

“It is our hope that this book will serve as an inspiration for communities looking to embrace walking and motivation for those already on the walking path,” says Simon.

Download the Free Ebook

Download America’s Walking Renaissance for free.

Popular Healthy Community Courses Now Available in Spanish

/in /by

Release Date: Aug. 1, 2016

Learners can learn about diabetes, health literacy and health insurance in Spanish or English

WOBURN—Talance, Inc., today expanded the reach of its popular courses in health education and promotion. Now, three of the most popular courses are available in Spanish as well as English: Health Literacy: A Start, Navigating Health Insurance and Diabetes and Prediabetes.

The Spanish version of the online courses feature the same interactive curriculua as their English counterparts, and are accessible from nearly any screen from talance.com. They also allow learners to ask questions and have discussions in Spanish. The courses also contain new and updated on-the-job resources available for Spanish speakers.

“Having these courses available in Spanish is a powerful tool for spreading information about these vital health topics,” says Monique Cuvelier, president and co-founder of Talance, which provides training to groups, teams and organizations across the US. Past projects from Talance include courses in Hebrew, French and English as a second language.

“Spanish is the biggest non-English language spoken in this country, and having courses available to this huge swath of the population is important.”

Health Literacy: A Start (Entendiendo la Información Sobre Salud: Primeros Pasos) offers an introduction to health literacy and why it matters, including assessment and communication skills for addressing literacy gaps.

Navigating Health Insurance (Entendiendo los Seguros Médicos) introduces the terms and concepts related to health insurance so participants can help clients get insured.

Diabetes and Prediabetes (Diabetes y Prediabetes) introduces non-clinical community and health workers to diabetes and prediabetes so they can support their clients’ management of the disease.

Talance’s ready-to-go courses take place over one week and feature expert facilitation by fluent Spanish speaking instructors. They’re designed to build healthy communities in schools, worksites, health care and community-based settings. Talance also creates custom curricula for clients who want to build their own healthy communities.

For more information on these courses and other educational materials from Talance, please visit talance.com or contact Monique Cuvelier at (888) 810-9109.

Exercise for Disease Management Is a Bitter Pill To Swallow

/in /by

Many find the advice of exercise for disease management a bitter pill to swallow, even when faced with a scary diagnosis like diabetes or hypertension. Thinking of exercise as doctor-ordered medicine makes it seem too tedious and boring. Simply “exercising for 30 minutes a day” can feel like too much of a time commitment. Sitting still is easier. This is why sedentary lifestyles lead to as many as 1 in 10 premature deaths around the world.

But what if exercise could be fun rather than a chore?

I saw this in action the other day at the gym. Looking out the window, trying to forget I was on the elliptical machine, I saw swarms of kids running, spinning around and racing each other everywhere. It’s the kind of behavior I hadn’t seen since I was about 12.

I wondered what on earth could push kids of all shapes and sizes to voluntary physical fitness. After all, these are the same children who statistically spend more than seven and a half hours a day in front of a screen.

They were playing Pokémon GO.

Making Physical Fitness a Game

Pokémon GO, for the uninitiated, is a wildly popular game for mobile devices that sends players on real-world scavenger hunts for online characters. Players see their real environment through their phones but with an image of a Pokémon character.

The unintended benefit of this game is that the kids in my neighborhood are becoming more physically active. Why? Because it’s fun.

This is the message we push in our work with schools, companies and communities. Make regular exercise fun, and people will keep doing it. Getting in 30 minutes per day does not have to be drudgery—honestly!

Ideas for Promoting Healthy Living

Pokémon GO is one suggestion for making healthy kids. Here are some other ideas from some of the people who participated in our Promoting Healthy Lifestyles course:

For two clients who are in wheelchairs but need physical activity:

“I recommend hand bikes, stretchy bands, leg lifts (if they are not paralyzed), and/or pool exercises.”

For a 16-year-old girl unhappy with her weight who loves animals:

“Volunteering at an animal shelter to walk the dogs/socialize with the animals is a low-cost way to get some exercise without ‘overtly’ exercising.”

For someone with arthritis pain to work healthy habits into his life:

“Since one of his barriers is pain in his joints, I advised him to start small by parking his car farther away from the entrance when he went shopping.”.

For motivating a family member to exercise regularly:

“My daughter was overweight and a loner. We started to go to Zumba classes together. She enjoys it and she has lost weight. She has maintained her weight and she changed her diet on her own.”

Share these ideas with someone who could use a little motivation for active living today.

4 Summer Reading Picks That Are Good for You

/in /by

If you like your summer reading to reaffirm the work you do building healthy communities, we’re here to help. Here’s your professional development reading assignment that’s actually fun. Some are learner favorites from our courses and others just deserve attention. Read on for picks for the summer reading season, which we hope will inspire you to keep learning even when you’re on the beach.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures

by Anne Fadiman, Paperback, 368 pages

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down could be a textbook case study for culturally competent care—it’s certainly a rich example and one we use in our health literacy course—but it’s also the compelling tale of what happens when well-intentioned health care workers fail at cross-cultural communication. Author Anne Fadiman tells with masterful literary journalism the story of Lia Lee, a Hmong child from a refugee family from Laos living in California. Lee, diagnosed with severe epilepsy, suffers while her loving parents and providers miscommunicate while she goes from emergency room visits to intensive care unit (ICU) admissions to legal courts and finally to irreversible neurologic damage.

Read an Excerpt

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down (Chapter 1) Birth

If Lia Lee had been born in the highlands of northwest Laos, where her parents and twelve of her brothers and sisters were born, her mother would have squatted on the floor of the house… READ THE FULL EXCERPT

The Arrival

by Shaun Tan, Hardcover, 128 pages

The Arrival

The Arrival is a stunning, compelling piece of art with a powerful story about what it’s like to leave your home for a new country. Shaun Tan’s graphic novel–which doesn’t use a single word (aside from the title)–is a lesson in empathy and communication. The migrant story trails a man who leaves his wife and child in a faraway city to find opportunity elsewhere. Everything is fantastical and foreign: strange animals, unintelligible languages, and incomprehensible customs. Along the way, he’s helped by strangers, who each have their own complex histories. Its gorgeous pages let you experience what it’s like to be helpless in a strange place, and also provide a valuable example of how you can communicate when words fail.

One Step Behind

by Henning Mankell, Paperback, 440 pages

One Step Behind is truly beach reading material, but it shows that illness can befall anyone, even Inspector Kurt Wallander. Henning Mankell’s popular Swedish crime series is just as gruesome and horrific as his other novels (spoiler alert!), but this time Wallander is solving crimes while dealing with a new diagnosis of type 2 diabetes. He shows that diabetes self-care is extremely challenging when you have a busy day job. This book didn’t make the cut of our Diabetes and Prediabetes course, but it still provides an interesting perspective on juggling health care needs with work.

Tip for TV-watchers: this book was also made into an hour-long series starring Kenneth Branagh.

Watch a Clip

Instant Influence: How to Get Anyone to Do Anything—Fast

by Michael Pantalon, Hardcover, 256 pages

Instant Influence

Students of Motivational Interviewing know that this communication framework is invaluable for inspiring people to stop smoking, eat less salt, exercise more, and generally make positive behavior changes. Instant Influence: How to Get Anyone to Do Anything—Fast by Dr. Michael Pantalon is an excellent introduction to how motivational interviewing can have a positive effect on just about anyone, including your patients, clients and community members. The author draws on his 20-year career in addiction research and clinical practice to realize that:

  1. Motivating someone to enter treatment can be done with effective strategies. (Interventions rarely work)
  2. We have treatments that work, but we’re not using them. (Most rehabs don’t use scientifically supported treatments)
  3. You need help to get good help. (AA is not treatment, a recovery coach will help you get treatment)

Watch a Clip

Sneak Peek at Our Course Diabetes and Prediabetes

/in /by

Diabetes affects more people today than ever before. In the US, 29.1 million people have diabetes, and that number is on the rise — up four million from 2010. Alarmingly, more than 8 million of those people are untreated. They may not even know they have the disease.

Community members might generally know they need help controlling their disease, but they lack the knowledge and motivation to make it happen.

We want to make that easier and more accessible with our course Diabetes and Prediabetes, recently revamped. This online course is a way to empower people to make it easier to change behaviors among those with, or at risk of developing, diabetes. It’s being used by schools, neighborhoods, and workplaces.

Check out the Diabetes and Prediabetes course overview to see more about the topics covered, and look at the sneak peek below.

Diabetes from Talance on Vimeo.

If you’d like to know more or are interested in a deeper look, please let us know! Contact me to set something up. Happy viewing!