Interview with Lynda Blades

About a month ago I had the chance to talk to Lynda Blades, program manager for the Physical Activity, Nutrition and Obesity (PANO) program at the Utah Department of Health. She was very accommodating and we had a great conversation about the challenges and rewards of being in public health and health promotion.

She, herself, graduate from BYU and then attended the "school up north" to receive her MPH. Her career in public health has ranged from teaching healthy eating, aerobics and fitness classes at Hill Air Force Base to working against heart disease in clinical settings in Montana. Reflecting on her past experience working with individuals and small groups, she says her current position as the program director of a state, population-based program has challenges and benefits.

The challenges of working in a population-based program to prevent obesity is that it can be extremely political and slow-moving. Besides the slow pace of politics, the pace of change in population-based programs is also hindered by the rate of trickle down from structural changes to behavior change. According to Blades, it can take your whole career to see a significant change.

However, despite the challenges she enjoys knowing that her program can help create places not just attitudes. Population-based work also has the advantage of being not as didatic in approach: more encouraging than instructing.

PANO, with its motto "Making the Healthy Choice the Easy Choice", is mainly about creating partnerships between the health department and worksites, schools, healthcare organizations, and communities. Blades finds the progress they have made so far encouraging. Forming partnerships with local urban planning boards has been one of their recent accomplishments. She sees the program is becoming more widespread and mentioned the recent initiation of "worksite awards" as a victory. However, patience is required. She mentioned despite the changes it can sometimes feel difficult to feel that "you're making a dent." According to her, at those times it's important as a health educator to remember that what you're doing is going to make a difference.

Her advice to budding young health professionals? Get exposure to as many areas of public health as you can. Blades feels her work in a local health department, with an HMO, and now in a population-based effort has given her a good feeling for all things current in public health practice. She particularly mentioned the stark difference between working with a local health department and a state health department, and thinks students should try to get the benefit of both.

After talking to her I was impressed both by her professionalism and her commitment to her program, despite its challenges. PANO is in good hands.

PANO was on the brink of publication of the Utah Nutrition and Physical Activity Plan 2010-2020 when Lynda Blades and I had our conversation. I checked back the other day and saw it was out and online! Check it out at the PANO webiste! You may see changes coming to your Utah neighborhood soon.