Latest / Here to Serve - A United Regional Podcast / Trevon Norman, Community Coalition Coordinator
Transcript
- United Regional: Welcome to Here to Serve, a UNITA Regional podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Graves. My favorite part of being the director of patient experience at UNITA Regional is the incredible people that I meet and work with on a daily basis. And I want you to meet them too. Join us to meet the people behind the badge and to highlight those who are here to serve. Trevon, welcome to the Here to Serve podcast. Finally. Yeah. We've been trying to make it happen for a while. Glad you're here, man. I'm glad to be here. Thank you. now this is I i have you been in a podcast before? I have. I have. and I know you were a radio guy for a while. I've heard your voice on the radio. A little bit. We had ten years of Mortal Life Radio there, Hot 103.9. So had a little bit of expertise there, did a few other podcasts, but man, are we finally We finally here. We're here. Here to serve. Here to serve. I was thinking this morning as I was thinking about this podcast, I was trying to remember when I met you. And I couldn't rem to be honest, I don't have like an you know, I don't have like a first memory, but the but the earliest one that really stands out is probably the same one for both of us. unfortunately, because we were we were bonded at an early age for life. yes. Nothing bonds people like a near death experience. Well, I mean, not for me. Yeah. Now for you and we won't name drop here, but the others that were Lynn Dudden, for sure. The others that were involved. Of of course, yeah, near death experience for them, but you know I'm gonna tell the story. So Go for it. Hey, we're he we're here. For I know I know we're gonna get into what Trevon does now and and he does work for us on the Patient Family Advisory Council in out of Regional. But how I met Trevon was at church camp a long, long time ago. in Lufkin, Texas. I have no idea. East Texas. And I don't even remember all the details. It's been so long ago. All I know is that the if you were a worker there, like a dean or doing something in the camp, you could you could drive a golf cart around because it's a big campus. And Behind the behind the main big church building there was this hill and the workers figured out that, and by workers I mean me, figured out that if you could drive a golf cart down that hill, especially at night when it's that damp East Texas grass, you could slam on the brakes, cut the wheel, and you would just do donuts all the way down that hill. And I spent a lot of time, you know, we're supposed to be praying or singing or something. I don't know, but I was doing donuts behind the hill. and But one day, as fate would have it, I'm not I don't remember why, but Trevon and our buddy Lynn was on the cart with me. And I was like, Hey, let's go do a donut down the hill and they both were like, That's not a good idea, you know? And I was like, No, no, I've done this a bunch of times. And w and we had done it a bunch of times before. Others had done it. So we're not we're not just gonna leave you under the bus. There were many others that were involved in this. Every time I had done it though, Trevon and and another person weren't on the cart with me. And so somehow I miscalculated And we got about one spin in and that that golf cart just and I'm thankful for God's grace that nobody was hurt that day. And it this was the inspiration for the name of the church you all have today. God's grace, grace church, grace park, yeah. No, I have to tell the listeners though, we we we gotta clarify a few things. So first of all, number one, we need to clarify that We may not have been I I'm I'm not gonna throw us under the bus like that. You know, we were where we were supposed to be when we were supposed to be there, but when we were had our leisure time, that's what people did. We just went down that hill. So clarification number one, clarification number two is that not everybody got to have golf carts. It just so happened that the bishop, your dad, yeah, was the principal of the camp. So we got to just hijack. Yeah. Perks. We took his cart. We got the perks. We we took his cart. And is there a statute of limitations on us getting in trouble? We can't get in trouble. No, there's no way we can get in trouble for this now. There was stu there but listen, if we're gonna go camp stores, there were way worse things. Lord have mercy on us, thank you. But I I had and just to paint the picture for everybody listening, it was a normal golf cart and two seats. And then it was just, you know, where you put your bags in the back. So I was standing Where the bags go, holding on. And then, of course, my great friend here is driving. And then he already name-dropped him, but Lynn Dutton's in the passenger side. And we're going down the hill, as Ryan said. And I'm holding on. And when he went to turn for the donut, you turned, and I felt it tip. So all I had to do was just put my foot down on the hill and let go. And I watched them roll right down the hill. And so I went out, I said, Lord. And When they got to the bottom, they were okay. So we're like, hey, we're good. Hey, we stood that card up so fast. It's like it never happened and we were just gone 'cause it's came down, picked it up, and guess what? No but we kept it in the pouch, like an extra stone that David had, but we have released it, let it out, we've told it. Like you said, statute limitations. It's all good. It's all good. But that is where it began. That's where it began. That's the first like clear, like core memory I have. I was trying to think. I know I've known you most of my life, I guess, but I remember that one very well because, you know, we almost died. So enough about old camp stories. Tell me what you do what you do now. I know that's a that's a big question. So let's start. Let's start with Prevention Alliance. Well Prevention Alliance for Wichita is the coalition I get the privilege and the honor of coordinating. And so when someone hears that word, when they ask what do I do, I say I'm a coalition coordinator and they kinda just still look at me puzzled. is to drive for that positive community change through education, through different resource events that we do, resource fairs. And of course, you know, we want to try to do it on a policy level. That's like the bread and butter for coalitions, is if they can get some policy put in place, then that's like the gold. That's the goal star. That's what you're reaching for. My job is to just get these people together. Coordinate it because we all have the same goal in mind. We all want to see the same result. We want to see it happen for our community for the better, for youth and adults alike. And so, with that, having the backing of our company, of course, Serenity Foundation, that's what we're driving for. And so, our group, we meet every month. You know this. Thank you for being such a pivotal piece to our coalition. Ryan serves as our one of our executive committee members and I'm thankful for that. But we meet every month to try to focus and talk about strategy and how we're going to achieve this. One of the goals of the coalition is to see a social hosting policy put in place. So we are working towards that and we're excited about what's coming in the future. Yeah. man, it's it's an honor to get to be on that. I've learned so much that I work that, you There's so much work something that's happening in the community that you don't even know about. And this was one of those. There was a lot of incredible work going on that I had I knew nothing about until you you brought me into it. Well you say that it's funny because you know, previously the my previous eight years, I still worked at Serenity Foundation, but I was a prevention specialist in our youth prevention program, which is also by default a part of the coalition. We have great prevention specialists who go out and do that education in the community schools and surrounding areas in the county. But I was doing that eight years prior. So I was already building those relationships and those foundations to whenever I made the transition, just it would it's gonna be an easy one. So it's funny you say I say Provention Alliance for Witch Talk, they're like, huh? And I'm like, Serenity Foundation. yeah. And then it clicks with them together. Just getting people to to know like okay, this is what we've added now. It's still a part of the umbrella. We're still on the team. It's just a a a different perspective or different aspect of it. Yeah, it makes sense. w what did you do before that? You were at the it was the Boys and Girls Club or the I was at the YMCA running the school age before and after program. And then previous to that, I was doing that same thing on the base. So I've that that spectrum has been covered. I was yeah. Because on the base it's the magical youth center, and they are affiliated with the Boys and Girls Club. So I was with Boys and Girls Club, was with the YMCA, and now I'm here with Swinity Foundation. Well, you've you've b basically spent your career doing work, you know, serving the community is a a way I would summarize all that. Yes, sir. What what do you think? I'm just curious. I've seen some of the data, it's just very fascinating to me. what do you think would surprise people about Wichita Falls as as we're looking at prevention? And and I think it might be worth saying a few words even too about prevention versus treatment. So I'm we're you're you're you're very specific about we're we're in the prevention phase is what you guys are focused on. And then what do you think would surprise people? to know. let's see. I think one of the things that would really shock folks and e even being on the coalition, we talked about it. One of the things that shocked me and all of us were like, well, we we weren't even aware is just how pivotal parental influence is. A lot of the prevention that we teach, the education, it depends on, of course, we're giving it to the individual in the classroom. We're trying to focus focus on it in a broader term as a coalition, but it takes them as an individual and their parents, because if they, you know, if they go home and it doesn't get reinforced, you know, and this, boy, we can get it, it translates into different things biblically and all that. But What those students, what we saw from their questionnaire and that data is that, man, if the parents disapprove, that usage is lower. I wish I could remember them off the top of my head, but when you put the stats side by side, and it wasn't what what blew me away about that data was all it had to be is the parent just disapproves of it. It's not that the parent put any rules in place against them. It wasn't there wasn't their school. It was Just the fact that a parent disapproves of this rules or caveats. Smoking, drinking, illicit drugs, I was Vaping. Yeah. And so it that that was it. It's like really it could because here's the deal. And and I get it, because a lot of times parents are like, Well, you know, what can I do there? I don't have time, we don't this that and To find out from the data that you can simply sit down and go, I would rather you not. I don't I don't approve of this. I would rather you not. Yeah. And and so speaking to that, you talk about, you know, the the surprise. One of the things that we have been trying to do is just to educate parents on how to strengthen their relationship with their their kids, with their youth and with those around them, so that when they do come back and say or come along and say, hey, I would rather you, I'd rather you not, they take it to heart. Yeah. Instead of it just sounding like like you said, you know, a a list of rules or or something like that. Okay. If a parent hears this right here, how do they how do they get that resource? What do they need to do? So any any resource that you you know you want to get, you can you can go visit our website. We've got resources there at Serenity Texas.com. Okay. You can come visit our office of 42 Forty five Kent Boulevard, we're in suite seven eighteen. But you can talk to all of if you go to in a public health, they have things there. If you go, your boys and girls clubs, if you you know, local boys and girls club have information in and things like that as well. And just general, yeah, general research, Google, go Googling those things to find out how what can I do to sit down because I mean, come on, we live in a day and age where it's like as soon as we're home, it's Right. Or well, and it's access is it's everywhere. And I think that there's a temptation for us to feel helpless or for our parents to feel helpless and go, there's nothing I can do. and so two big takeaways that I've gotten from this from the group and the data is the the first thing you can do is talk about it early, talk about it soon, right? Get it in front of them that hey, I do not you know, I'd rather you didn't. and then have a relationship with your kid is like the the biggest thing you could do to prevent. them going down this path. Sure. And and of course on the back end, we've got everything that we do that is, you know, you may throw out a technical term real quick. EBIs are evidence based interventions of the curriculums and different things that we can do. But when it's something that's that easy and it's right there in front of you. And it's a big piece of the data, man. And so that's why we we focus on that because it's an easy it's an easy go. It's an easy transition to make. But I think the community w would be shocked to know that. Yeah. And I was. I was surprised. I mean, I know I know theoretically that you know, obviously parents make a different, right? I no doubt about that. But just the simplicity of a parent disapproves, that was such a a differentiator was was surprising to me. And so to the the second part of your question, like what we do as preventionists is we are trying to get ahead. We're trying to go upstream. If I can paint a picture, you've got A bridge that's broken. Okay, so what we're trying to do is get upstream and let people know this bridge is broken so that folks don't just all of a sudden get to the bridge and we're not at the bridge going, hey, don't step here. We're tr we're trying to go. And so we're trying to get ahead of things. And the way we do that is just by those, those different tactics or strategies, what we call them, that we do to try to get those in place so that when it comes down the road you are already aware. Yeah. You already know because you know awareness is very important as well. So well you you already mentioned this earlier, but I wanted to I wanted to tie to it. if anybody if people haven't figured it out just by listening to Trevon talk for a moment. Trayvon's a pastor also and all of this community work ties together so well with what you're what you're doing prevention in the community. And I know you were a youth pastor. for for many years leading up to this. And so you've seen this. Got that privilege, yeah. Yeah, you've seen this from the ministry and the spiritual standpoint, but also from sec your actual career in the community. You've seen it from kind of both sides. But there's a clear crossover here, you know, and I I also do you see the privilege, right? The privilege of being a a youth pastor. I was that had that same privilege. yes and then one of the things I just saw over and over again was, you know, the parents play a r a bigger role than we can ever even explain, right? In in that child's success and and what the what path they're gonna go down is, you know, the power of of a of a family and having a relationship with a kid. So it's just interesting. I I gotta imagine you see many other crossovers in both of these man work. I I won't get too far off topic, but go for it. was in the training and was facilitating the training and was talking about in a what we were talking about was the different sectors of communities and the participants in this training were talking about how hard it is to get into the faith-based community where they're at. And so I just was able to share for a second, like here, try these these different things. because it was so much crossover. Yeah. I felt like I was cheating. I'm like, I'll take this from, you know, the biblical side and apply it to the prevention work because it's the same principle. And I'll do the same thing in my prevention work. I'm about I'm take this and teach about it, you know, in Bible study or whatever. And it it is just when you can bring those two together, man, it it is such a resource for people who do the work we do. And it is such a benefit for those faith-based organizations, those churches, if you know they'll come on board. Now it there is There's a trust factor and all of that and th there's it's work in progress, but I really feel it's an underutilized sector. Yeah. So that's Well, one of the one of the things I say often is it's all ministry. Like I and I feel I have a similar role in healthcare. you know, I work in the healthcare space, but our our primary goal is healing people, right? Is we want people to get better. And so I s I'm an assistant pastor also and so I'm like, Man, it's all men everything that we do is ministry and I I constantly remind nurses and providers and and anybody I work with at the organization and United Regional, I'm always reminded like, hey, you are on sacred ground. You know, a lot a lot of people don't think of coming to United Regional as going to a ministry. But I'm like it's ministry. But it it absolutely you are ministering to people's souls every single day, in their most vulnerable and sacred moments. and I think there's such I I can't separate the two anymore. It all runs together. You could try. Yeah. Right. But it's not it's not gonna work. But I mean look how much it is engraved in yeah, what you do. It's funny you say graves engraves in me. Boy, we're rolling them out today. You can't you can't get away from it. It's you got y'all have chaplains. Right. And what whatever else y y'all got. I mean, it's it's all a part of what you do. So it just makes sense. Yeah. And of course, you know, we have the other sectors that we work with and we're grateful for and we love them too, but It's just whenever you we're talking about things that we also do in the community, it's like, how come this hasn't been? So it's been it's been a privilege and an honor to be able to bridge that gap a little bit. Yeah. And yeah, we've got a lot of work to do in other areas as well, but it's yeah, it's special for sure. Well, thank you for all the work you're doing, around the and have done and are doing around the community. Give shout out to your what's the name of your church and where's it at? It's good shout out. shout out to Life Church in Burke Burnett, Texas. My wife and I get the privilege of being the campus pastors there to a great little congregation of folks thriving and growing and we're having a great time. Been there for boy, four years now. It's I can't believe it's been that long. It's been that long. It's incredible. But we officially became campus pastors in June of last year. Awesome. So Yeah, shout out shout out to you guys doing great work over there. Yes. Great work, great people. And I gotta shout out everybody on the coalition too. You know, here's the thing. It doesn't work if you don't have passionate great people. And I will brag on everybody. I wish we had time. I'd go through individual and name every single one of them and what they bring and what they contribute to the coalition and to this community. Man, when you hear listen, it's I knew when we started this thing, I was like, this is gonna be. It's work bounce, I guess it's gonna be a breeze because of the people we have in place. When you start talking about Wichita Falls, when you start talking about the community and how they light up and their passion. Mm. I love it. I I I've met a lot of you, I don't know if I've met all, but I've met many of of the folks you're referencing and they've all been incredible and I'm excited to Ted that I've gotten to know them and continue to get to know them more. Yeah. in the work that you guys are doing. So any any anything else you wanna talk about for I'm gonna move on to different topic, but anything you want to talk about as far as Prevention Alliance before I move away from that that we didn't cover? No, I I don't know. I'm I can't think of anything right now. Just, you know, be looking for us. I know you'll see the billboards, you'll see everything like that. But when you when you hear Prevention Alliance for Wichita, you think of us. Yeah. And and we're here for the community. We're ready. They could put a face to the billboards when they see off. One at one of two of And just think These faces and golf cart. There you go. There you go. That'll be it. Awesome. Well, I want to also do a quick shout out to Trevon for joining us. So this was kind of a little bit of a a trade here is Trevon asked me to be on his his council and it was an honor to be a part of that for I don't know a year or so. And and United Regional started putting together a patient and family advisory council. And I was getting to be the the co chair of that and they said, Hey, let's start reaching out to community members that we think would would benefit. And I'm like, first of all, I know the perfect person for this. And second of all, I'm on his I'm on his council, so he's gotta say yes. He owes me one. He would anyways, but I'm like, I got him. He's gotta do this. and so we were able to invite you into our patient family advisory council and you've been a huge you're one of the OG members. I've been a huge part of that. Thank you. and I want to just spend a couple minutes talking about what that's been like and what what some of the work that's been done there. but just tell me a little bit about your first introduction to that. So myself and Shelly Mosier just grabbed a random sampling of folks in the community and said, Hey, will you help us? and I think they're also going, what in the world have we gotten ourselves into? But just let's talk a little bit about Family Advisory Council. man, yeah, like you like you just said, I'm not gonna rehash that, but yeah, it was hey, can you do me a solid? You know what I got you. But like you said, watching everybody, our first meeting, I remember it, as we sat in that room, everybody with a deer in the head, like, look, what in the world are we doing? And to watch Shelly and you and Fred and I'm missing a few others, but to get up there and speak your piece about why this is important. There was a slow Chestercat grin that came on my face. And to watch the others that were there, watch their guard kind of come down. Like, So I want to commend you and your team for making people feel at ease and making them feel important and seen and heard. Because I'll tell you what, there's a concept in prevention. There's a a great prevention mentor. He has a saying, and this is what we follow when we're talking about. implementing anything is called n it says nothing about us without us. I love that. And so if you're going to do prevention in a community, but that community is not involved or at the table to plan or anything like that, you're you're doomed. Yeah, I agree. And so for you guys to start to recognize we need to hear from the community and that you brought different community members to the table and not only brought to the table, but you gave them a voice. And gave them an area to be comfortable with being able to speak, man, it was great. That's awesome. Well, I appreciate that. And and man, we I think that all this success of being able to have a patient family advisory council, we didn't know what that was gonna look like, but we just we we've learned over the years and and I gotta give you know so much credit here, all the credit really to Shelly Mosier. She's the the vision behind this. But to just we don't know what we don't know, let's just start. Let's just start. but I think so much of what has come from that has been the right people. We had the right people in the room that said, we care about this community. This is where we get our, this is where we get our healthcare at, right? And so we we're gonna tell you guys the truth. and we're gonna tell you the truth in love. We're not trying to tell down. We're not trying to we we want you to be successful, we're gonna tell the truth. And man, it was so it was just so awesome. I know we didn't know what to expect on that first meeting, you know, being fully transparent. I was kind of expecting this first meeting to be like everybody that's got a bone to pick and this community's gonna show up here and then we're gonna have we're gonna have an hour of a gripe session. and I'm I'm here for it. If we mess up, we fess up. I'm gonna write it all down. We're gonna work on it. You know, and sometimes it's a little bit of that, but y as it got out of their system, you you know, you were what we saw. Yeah, it was it was hey, here's some concerns we have and and then we said, Hey, we hear those concerns, let's see what we can do about them. And we tried to do what we could about them. But and there was some of that and we want that. We wanna hear when things aren't right. But what What was so refreshing and just i so exciting to me was the group said, Now, now let us let us speak into like here's all the things that you can do to be great. and then when we have questions, we're bringing to you. And then there was such a hunger within the group for knowledge and understanding of we wanna know how billing works. We wanna know how my chart works, we wanna know and then we wanna take it, not only do we wanna learn it, we're gonna take it back to our community. You gotta no, you you say my chart, you gotta give room for the dun dun dun. Yeah. You know, everybody. You say my chart. Dun dun dun yeah. Yeah. We're gonna we gotta open up my chart and get into the weeds and let's figure out how to get in here and and learn things because my chart's such a huge benefit. But if you don't know how to use it or it can be overwhelming. So it's it's been it's been a wild ride. We have I've lost count of how many members we have. We have a second committee now, non English speaking committee. And The the follow through, you guys again to be commended because it's one thing to bring people to the table to hear everything they have to say. It's another thing for you all at United Regional to go back and to follow through with what the council has said, the ideas, and to report that back, to bring it back, that accountability. And it just it creates more buy in. Right. Trust and buy in. Yeah. So you guys have done an excellent job and it's Again, I've said it four or five times, but I'll say it again, it's been an honor because now I know that if someone comes to me, you know, with I know how to. Yeah. And we see that so much as as folks come in the c random person in the community brings the concern. There's a funnel now to get that to us or somebody's in the organization. 'cause we wanna know we wanna know, we wanna make a ride to the best of our ability. We wanna learn and grow. And I think what there was a cool moment for me. There's been so many. I I I'll miss I'll only I shouldn't even start naming moments because I'll miss them because there were so many cool moments of things that were brought to us that I would have been blind to I would have never seen. Sure. Cause I look I work here, I've been here twenty years, I won't I don't there's certain things I just don't see anymore. And somebody else sees it and we go, that was a blind spot, let's fix it. But one of my favorite moments was was recently. somebody a newer committee member had asked a question and they asked a question about youth prevention. And I kind of started snickering them and I looked over and I'm like, I think I know somebody can answer that question. And so these are two people that are from the community that don't know each other. and and this patient family advisor council, I was always saying hey, there's somebody over there that can answer that question for you. So you guys, I saw y'all stink up after meeting. Surprise, surprise, you're on the agenda for the next meeting to talk to that whole group about the resources that you have in the community. and and it's that's not the first time that's happened. There are people that are on the the committee that have other resources in the community to go, hey, we gotta tie these in together. And so I I just it gets me very fired up and excited to see things working like that. Man, yes. I got called out. I was happy to be called out. Return the favor. Make sure I told everybody tell Ryan happy birthday. It was my birthday and Treyvon called me out on that. Gotcha. Got me back. Yeah, the one other thing I'll say, I hope this is okay, but You know, y'all got two new patients or d two new recipients out of it, 'cause you know, my wife and I now have PCPs here at United Regional. You know, I'm on with Doctor Tisdale and my wife's experience w I I played that for y'all at the That was that was that was the best thing ever. So Treyvon actually played his wife's voicemail of her first experience at United Regional. And I don't remember exactly what it was, but she was very excited with the service that she received. She was blown away and I made sure to come back and tell y'all and I you know, played it for all of the the leadership because i it means that much. You know, when going back and talking about how much they cared, all the follow through everything like that. So it's sacred, man. It's sacred pl you're you're your most vulnerable, you're most scared when you go into healthcare. And that's when we in the community needs you, not only should we give the and this is my you know, I've I'll preach this all day and people get sick of me talking about it, but we have to give the right and appropriate, excellent clinical care. But people have to know that you care about them. Or else you're missing it. Right. And so it's both of those things. And man, I love it when when somebody like your wife walks out of there and goes, Those people know what they're doing and they care about me. They care. I'm like, I that's that's it. That's what I'm looking for. That's all I want. And you were I I was actually thinking about you because you and the the team walking example. I was in Florida a couple of weeks ago for a training. You actually took the meeting, our coalition meeting for me. So thank you for that. One of the sessions I was in was we don't care how much you know.