Meet the Developers
Jacki Hecht
RN, BSN, MINT
Lead Coaching Sciences Trainer
Jacki has a Masters’ degree in Oncology Nursing, and a Bachelor’s in Nutritional Sciences. She is the Managing Director of the Center for Health Equity Research at the University of Texas at Austin School of Nursing. Ms. Hecht has spent the last 30 years working in Behavioral Medicine and Community-Focused Research at Brown University affiliated hospitals in Providence, RI, and (since 2015) at The University of Texas at Austin School of Nursing, where she has designed, delivered, and evaluated motivational interventions to promote health behavior change in areas such as smoking, weight loss, substance use, mental health, and general health promotion. Ms. Hecht is a member of the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers (MINT) and has offered hundreds of training workshops and coaching sessions around the world for healthcare practitioners, including lay health workers. Ms. Hecht is also a Texas certified Community Health Worker (CHW) Instructor and has developed and delivered numerous Community Health Worker trainings.
Shannon M. Lijewski
MBA, NCHW, CHCEF
Shannon has over 20 years of experience as a CHW. She has worked in the field, designed, implemented and evaluated programs, designed curriculum and taught CHW’s and has been a leading stakeholder on policy and finance sustainability of CHW’s across the country.
Shannon is a mission-focused, technically savvy CEO, consultant, project management professional (PMP), and subject matter expert (SME) with proven track record designing state-of-the-art program initiatives to transform healthcare landscapes for local, state, and national clients. She is the Principal at Everyday Life Consulting whose team brings vast experience that focuses on building individual, organization and community capacity to address social determinants of health through clinical-community linkages and CHW sustainability. Shannon is a wife, mother and entrepreneur with a passion for helping people. Everyday Life allows her to utilize her gifts for distilling, organizing and simplifying processes.
Kent Newman
Media Producer and Consultant
Kent Newman is a writer, producer and director in Des Moines. He founded Full Spectrum Productions
in Ames in 1986 and has extensive experience in all aspects of production, including videographer,
producer, director, location sound recorder, editor, production manager, location scout, location
manager, location producer and local production services liaison for national network and cable
programs, commercials, infomercials, and feature films.
He has written and directed numerous multipurpose education/advocacy productions about public issues
for private nonprofit, education, and government agencies as well as businesses, and has received
numerous awards for educational and documentary productions. His credits include ABC, CBS, NBC,
CNN, VH-1, MTV, BBC, PBS, NHK, Alhurra/Middle Eastern Broadcasting Network, Motiv Films,
Murphy-Putnam, Trailer Park Productions, AARP, Tires Plus, Hamburger Company, and Junk Food srl,
an Italian production company.
Contact information
kent@fullspectrumproductions.com
515-250-9459
Tinika Roland
Consultant & Owner at INIKATAE’ Consulting
Tinika Roland currently serves as a Lead Instructor for CHWTO. She is an experienced instructor, having developed, implemented and instructed several courses for a college level Human Resources Certificate Program for William Penn University in Des Moines. Roland previously served in a training role for Wells Fargo Bank as part of the Human Resources Department, including directing and implementing leadership, recruitment and diversity and performance counseling training for all levels of management, including executives. Facilitated diversity courses, manager orientation, and group training sessions on employee relations compliance and employee development. Roland has a Master of Arts in Business Leadership (1998).
Roland currently works for Des Moines Area Community College (DMACC) in student orientation, academic advising and outreach, with a traditional and nontraditional student body at DMACC’s urban campus. In this role Roland is familiar with helping students with a variety of needs navigate assistance to address myriad needs. Roland is also a radio talk show host, educating African American communities on social determinants of health.
Roland’s recent experience has focused on a core function of community health workers – outreach through work for Healthy Birthday’s program, Count the Kicks. In this role Roland has been responsible for outreach in the local African American community, including successfully planning outreach events. Roland also has work experience in outreach and enrollment for the healthcare marketplace, coordinating outreach for the state’s managed care organizations, and with members of the community on navigating the healthcare arena – specifically Medicaid. For these reasons, Roland has expertise in understanding the role of community health workers.
Katie Ebinger
MPH, MSW
Facilitator, Advancement & Healthcare Transformation, HealthTeamWorks
As both a public health and social work professional, Katie brings to HealthTeamWorks a breadth of knowledge in health systems, management, and policy as well as a passion for supporting organizations and providers in the creation of environments and communities where everyone can thrive. In her role as a social worker, Katie engaged with both patients and providers, serving individuals with complex chronic diseases as well as supporting the wellbeing of health and human services providers. She has also worked with several non-profit organizations throughout Colorado, engaging in program evaluation, strategic planning, lean systems improvement, organizational advancement, and cross-sector collaboration.
In her role at HealthTeamWorks, Ms. Ebinger provides subject matter expertise in the areas of diversity, health equity, and inclusion as well as compassion fatigue and burnout, including the development and implementation education and training for stakeholders across the healthcare field. In addition, Katie facilitates a range of quality improvement and care integration efforts, from implementing medication for Opioid Use Disorders to supporting NCQA accreditation. She is also the co-creator of a nationally used compassion resilience toolkit for health and human services professionals, providing training on the topic across the US.
Katie received her Master of Public Health from the Colorado School of Public Health as well as her Master of Social Work from the University of Denver. Ms. Ebinger is dedicated to connecting and creating systems of care that both support the quadruple aim and move the needle in the direction of health equity.
Erika R. Lee
MPT
Erika R. Lee is from Omaha, Nebraska. She is a graduate of Iowa State University, where she received her Bachelor of Science in Sociology. She then returned to Omaha and attended Physical Therapy School at UNMC (University of Nebraska Medical Center) where she received her Master of Physical Therapy (MPT). Erika practiced Physical Therapy for 15 years (ten of those years she worked as a traveling P.T. and had assignments in various cities across the US). She then started her own Non-Medical Homecare Company of which she was Founder and CEO. What started with Erika as the first employee, turned into a successful company which had more than 50 employees and many clients across the Omaha Metropolitan Area. While building her company, she also began attending trainings in personal development and leadership.
After 7 successful years, Erika made the difficult decision to close her homecare business. This decision led to the opportunity for Erika to experience speaking and training small and large groups in personal development on 4 different continents as well as across the US. Erika is honored to be an instructor with the CHW Professional Skills Certification Course.
Deborah H. Thompson
MPA
Deborah Thompson has a professional background and passion for public health practice and especially as it relates to community and population health. She believes that prevention of disease and injury is a critical tool for life long happiness and prosperity.
Deborah worked for Iowa’s state health department for over 7 years and also worked in the healthcare sector for a short time. Presently, she owns DHT Consulting & Training, a consulting, training and project management business that serves organizations in the public health and healthcare sectors. Her purpose is to support impactful and mission driven work by using her commanding knowledge of government affairs, advocacy strategies, communications techniques and facilitation and project management to increase the bandwidth of community leaders in the nonprofit, government, academic, public health and healthcare sectors.
To Deborah, community health workers are an important tool for building trust. People need to trust the information that’s coming to them about their health and well-being. More importantly, it needs to be information that is correct and backed by expertise. Deborah knows that a well-trained CHW meet these needs at an individual level and at the community level.
She lives in Urbandale, Iowa with her son Lincoln who is in second grade. She enjoys gardening, yoga and podcasts.
Deborah worked on five of the course modules. And those included:
- The role of community health workers. This module really celebrates all of the ways that CHWs help individuals and communities and the skills sets they need to be successful.
- An Introduction to Public Health that provides an overview of the work of public health professionals and how CHWs contribute to the goal of preventing disease and injury or sometimes helping clients to manage their symptoms.
- Healthcare and Health Policy that focuses on understanding some of the complexities of the healthcare system and how policy impacts health outcomes. And then the roles that CHWs can play in influencing both practice and policy in the healthcare sector.
- Promoting Health Eating and Active Living that focuses on understanding the guidelines for healthy eating and having an active lifestyle and the roles that CHWs play in helping their clients make positive changes in their routines.
- Understanding Trauma and supporting Recovery of Survivors that focuses on understanding how trauma may have impacted clients and communities CHWs work in and suggests strategies for how CHWs can support the recovery of survivors.