by Cheri Farris
One of the important activities in the internship placement is to plan and facilitate a minimum of one new National DPP Lifestyle Coach training targeting gap areas that help to reach priority populations.
Mr. Coyle and I determined a date and location for the upcoming National DPP Lifestyle Coach Training. As a certified Diabetes Technical Training Assistance Center (DTTAC) Master Trainer Select, I will facilitate this training. Since March 2017, I have trained approximately 55 lifestyle coaches across Nebraska through a partnership with Panhandle Public Health District (PPHD), where I am employed as a community health educator, and NE DHHS. The lifestyle coach training is scheduled for June 27-28 at the Lincoln Medical Education Partnership from 9-4:30 on both days.
In addition to the 12 hours of lifestyle coach training, I will also facilitate an ongoing refresher training that I developed in 2018 called The Coaching Approach to Communication: Lessons from Motivational Interviewing, a Workshop for Lifestyle Coaches from 2-4:30 on the second day of the training. This portion is open to all lifestyle coaches in addition to the new trainees. I have had quite a bit of training in Motivational Interviewing and I use it regularly in my work as a health and wellness coach and lifestyle coach. In 2015, I earned a Wellcoach certification so that I could effectively meet the needs of my coaching clients and National DPP participants. The Wellcoaches School curriculum includes lots of evidence-based coaching theories including Motivational Interviewing. In the Nebraska Panhandle we have offered this workshop to our lifestyle coaches and received positive feedback.
Several people have signed up for the lifestyle coach training at the end of this month in Lincoln, and I have recruited my colleague who submits all of our data to the CDC for recognition for all of our area partner organizations to present that portion of the training. We are also developing a lifestyle coach and organization/site commitment form and a referral systems document. As far as the Lifestyle Coach training, I am a Diabetes Technical Training and Assistance Center (DTTAC) Master Trainer (MT) Select, so I follow their lifestyle training format. MT Selects are subject to ongoing evaluation and training, and must renew our commitment annually, and adhere to DTTAC policies, including agreeing not to share proprietary training materials outside of lifestyle coach trainings. DTTAC is housed at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, and was the first organization to provide lifestyle coach training for the National DPP in 2010, and continues to hold a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the CDC to offer CDC- approved lifestyle coach training and advanced trainings.
The lifestyle coach training and lifestyle coach calls require me to demonstrate several MPH competencies, including MPH Competency 21: Perform effectively on inter-professional teams. There are always lifestyle coaches from a variety of disciplines that I collaborate with to move the work forward in the state on calls, and with trainees I cater the examples in the lifestyle coach trainings to their particular settings in which they plan to deliver the program so that they are able to get the most benefit from the training and feel confident about facilitating the National DPP in their community.