PARK HILLS, MO |
Original article can be found at: http://dailyjournalonline.com/
With the recent retirement of former St. Francois County Health Center Director Debbie Hoehn, Jessica McKnight — who for the past two-and-a-half years has served as the center’s assistant director — has taken over the reins of leadership and is excited about the future.
Originally from the south-central town of Flora, McKnight attended college at Southern Illinois University–Carbondale, where she focused her studies on public relations, speech communications, marketing and journalism. After graduation she moved to Alton, Illinois, where she worked for five years at a federally qualified health center and attended graduate school at Southern Illinois University–Edwardsville, earning a Master’s Degree in Public Administration.
“It was more along the lines of public budgeting, along with some more marketing, public relations — and even some journalism,” McKnight said. “I learned about administration — basically receiving an MBA for the public sector. Where I was working then allowed me, while I was going back to school, to bump into administration.
“I was an administrative supervisor there for two years and also did some billing. I knew that I wanted to be working somewhere in health care. I’d always known I wanted to work in health care and it didn’t take me long to realize that the clinical side was not for me.”
It was about that time McKnight saw a job posting for what she considered her dream job — assistant director at a health department.
“I applied, got an interview and got to come here,” she said.
Asked what she’s enjoyed most about her time so far at the health center, McKnight was quick to respond.
“Really being able to get out into the community,” she said. “This community is much more similar to where I grew up — that kind of small town, close knit, caring community vs. the Metro East St. Louis area. Being able to get out into the community and get to know people and really know that what I do makes a difference.
“It’s important to have a job where you feel like you’re making a difference and you really love doing what you’re doing.”
But does McKnight think she’ll feel the same about her new position as director?
“It’s kind of the same, but anytime you’re growing there’s always more opportunities, so I feel that this is another opportunity to keep doing what I love,” she said.
McKnight also expressed appreciation for the staff that works alongside her at the health center.
“I feel confident taking on this position also because of our staff,” she said. “We have a wealth of knowledge in our staff who have years of experience, and we have new staff that is excited and full of new ideas. Everywhere I’ve worked, the staff has been like a family. We feel like the staff supports one another and they’ve been supportive of me.”
McKnight said the health center’s main goals are to get its name and information about its services out into the community.
She said, “We’ve been kind of a ‘best kept secret in the county’ — that’s what people say about what we do. We want people to know about some of the things that we’ve started doing — some of the new programs and services that we’re offering. We’re here to serve the community, whether that be inside these walls or whether it’s us going out to the community and bringing our services to the people.
According to McKnight, public health is prevention, promotion and protection.
“But it’s a lot of prevention,” she said. “A lot of our services are preventative because we’re focused on addressing a problem before a problem happens — just getting out into the community and addressing people where we’re preventing diseases instead of treating them.”
With McKnight’s ascension to the health center’s directorship, Amber Elliott, RN/BSN, has been promoted to assistant director.
The Caledonia native has been on staff at the center for about two years and lives in Farmington.
Asked how she came to the center, Elliott said, “I’ve been a nurse for 10 years, but I was really interested in public health because of the emphasis on prevention — promoting health and protecting the community as a whole instead of focusing on an individual patient.”
Elliott and McKnight have already had a lot of experience working together. The pair put in many hours of hard work getting the health center accredited.
“There was a lot of self-evaluation done of the health center as a whole and our functions — the things we provide to the community, our work with community partners,” Elliott said. “There was a lot of reviewing documentation to prove these things because you can’t just say you did it. You’ve got to have a way to prove it. So, really kind of looking at the services that we provide where me might have gaps and what we can do to fix those.”
McKnight said, “It was a really good process. It helped the both of us being new to the health center and public health in general to really determine what it is that we’re about. For many years before we got here they had been working on this.”
“Accreditation is a standard. It shows that we are dedicated to providing quality services. We put in a lot of work to, like she said, self-evaluate to make sure that what we’re doing is addressing community needs because we’ve identified them through this process.”
According to Elliott, the job of assistant director isn’t as glamorous as some people might think.
“But it’s good and we’re working directly together and we work really well together, so I think it will be really good,” she said.
SFCHC is located at 1025 W. Main St. in Park Hills. For assistance or more information call 573-431-1947 or send an email to advice@sfchc.org.
Kevin Jenkins is a reporter for the Daily Journal and can be reached at 573-518-3614 or kjenkins@dailyjournalonline.com
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