Caregiver Feature 
As a Community Relations Specialist and former Miss South Dakota, Anna Whetham has a passion for bringing groups together. Her awareness of community needs and a harrowing medical experience provided a serendipitous backdrop to bring her unique skill set to Monument Health.
Every day is different for Anna Whetham. As Community Relations Specialist in Strategic Marketing and Communications, Anna brings Monument Health and the people it serves together, which means acting as a point of contact between organizations both internal and external. “Community Relations focuses on a couple key areas: through sponsorship, community health education and engagement with our caregivers,” she said. Sometimes that means organizing and facilitating free health screenings at existing events, such as Lakota Nation Invitational, and sometimes that means organizing and putting on Monument Health sponsored gatherings like Special Rodeo.
“That’s a unique opportunity that I have: I get to work with a lot of different people. I get to work with leaders, I get to work with nurses and physicians, I get to work with all different types of departments. It’s a firsthand glimpse of the work that people are doing inside our facilities and outside our facilities. I get that well-rounded view of how everything is connected.”
The work is a calling, not only because of Anna’s enthusiasm for community engagement and her prior experience in a very public role as a Miss South Dakota 2011, but also due to a scary episode that was both life changing and also life affirming.
Several years ago, Anna, expecting her first child, experienced pregnancy complications that required hospitalization at Rapid City Hospital. She was diagnosed with a preeclamptic complication called HELLP syndrome (Hemolysis, Elevated Liver enzymes and Low Platelets), which is a dangerous blood and liver condition that can threaten the life of both mother and baby.
“Things got really intense, really fast. Essentially, the pregnancy became toxic to my body, and my body was starting to shut down,” she said. Anna’s daughter was born premature at 27 weeks gestation and weighed a mere 1 pound, 15 ounces. An extended stay in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) followed.
Anna and her daughter have since fully recovered and are completely healthy. The experience, though, had a profound influence on Anna. “Ever since that happened, there was just a piece of my heart that was still connected to the hospital, and to how health care plays such an important role in our lives, even in ways we may not understand until we need it.”
Later, when she was presented with the prospect of working for Monument Health, Anna saw it as a chance to not only give back, but to help shape and strengthen the organization’s outreach in the area. Her efforts have borne fruit, too. “This past fiscal year, we did 18,664 health screenings at 91 different events/locations. From the sponsorship standpoint, we gave out over a half-million dollars to 188 different community organizations.”
And yet, there is always more work to be done. “The power of presence is a big piece of what we’re doing. And it helps with trust, but also with trying to help our community have better access to health care at the end of the day.”
In her free time, Anna stays as close to her family as possible. “Family is very, very important to me, especially because there was a time that we had to look at potentially, you know, saying goodbye. And so it has put an even bigger emphasis on making sure that I am being as present as I can.”
She and her husband Josh, also raise horses as a hobby, so perhaps it’s no surprise that the project in which Anna is most heavily involved is Monument Health’s Special Rodeo. “That was a unique opportunity that was brought to us that Monument Health decided to take on because of the importance of celebrating and embracing diversity and lifting up those in our area that have disabilities,” said Anna.
Even though the connection of Special Rodeo to a traditional rodeo is spiritual – the participants interact only with tame therapy animals – it speaks to the necessary creativity for what is central to the challenge of Anna’s endeavor: how to help those beyond the walls of the hospitals.
“How can we, with the resources that we have, make an impact? How can we best use those resources in a way that is continuing to change people’s lives?,” she said. “Sometimes that impact may not even have a health specific component to it. It might be lifting people up, encouraging them and developing a positive spirit out in our community, which goes a long way.”