HPW Student Internship Experience – Hailey Kunavich 16′
My internship at HealthPartners showed me all aspects of worksite wellness and health coaching. Health Partners is an insurance company that also offers health care for its members, meaning they have a true interest in the well-being of their clients. In my time here I worked for the Health Promotion Department, specifically with the Phone Coaching Team. It was a little different to experience wellness in a large corporation such as this, but I was provided with a plethora of experiences. I was granted the opportunity to work on many materials that needed to be updated for the educational pieces and group coaching presentations that Health Partners provides. One group coaching session I updated was also one I helped to facilitate for employees at the St Paul Court House. My supervisor allowed me to go to the National Wellness Conference as a part of my internship and then present to the coaching team on what I learned there that was most valuable to what they do. I was able to shadow the phone coaching sessions firsthand and also take part in ‘fishbowl coaching’ where the coaches listen to each other’s sessions and offer feedback and insight. I went offsite for two separate weeks to shadow an employee at Macalester University who acts as the Wellness Coordinator and Health Coach for staff and faculty at the school. I helped her with communications and project plans and sat in on her one-on-one health coaching sessions. I also spent a week shadowing an employee who is the Wellness Coordinator for
employees of Minneapolis Public Schools, which includes 56 schools. We created communications, programming ideas for the upcoming school year and a safe city walking route for employees. Pictured here is the ‘Wellness Appreciation Station’ I created for the 11th floor (floor for Health Promotion). The goal was to create a wellness challenge for the department as an opportunity to practice what we preach and bring the team together, since the HealthPartners is usually creating wellness programs instead of participating in them. I headed up a challenge called ‘Attitude of Gratitude’ to start off, running the weekly messages, tracking participation and creating a post-evaluation. I also created 3 more challenges to happen every couple of months over the next year, each focusing on new dimensions of wellness. Overall, everyone at HealthPartners was very kind and helpful. Most importantly my supervisor was always making sure that this internship panned out to be a well-rounded learning experience
Objectives
- Behavior:
- Resume building experience: entry level engagement adviser position/ phone coach.
- Shadow Engagement Specialist team members.
- Provide Health Assessment follow up support to participants.
- Shadow phone coaches.
- Complete basic wellness coaching training objectives.
- Provide supervised phone coaching.
- Promotion and Marketing:
- Shadow meetings between client management staff communications/marketing team.
- Create handouts/flyers for a wellness product in conjunction with the Product Team and the appropriate Well-being Client manager.
- Work with Supervisor and other team members to prepare for implementation of a new wellness product.
- Organizational Experiences:
- Internal customer needs evaluation and report.
- Gather, evaluate, analyze and present feedback on improvement ideas from internal customers from within HPD.
- Interview a list of key contacts from within the Health Promotion Dept. Document specific internal processes and ask for feedback on potential improvements. Report findings to the leadership team.
On-Site Supervisor
Kathryn (Beth) Macias
Supervisor, Health and Wellness Service Team
8170 33rd Ave So
MS 21111H
Bloomington, MN 55425
Kathryn.e.macias@healthpartners.com
952-967-7288
Hours
About 40 hours per week (400 total)
Stipend
$9 per hour
UW-Stevens Point Students Who Completed Internship
- Hailey Kunavich, Summer 2016 (pictured above)