health center

SIOUX CENTER – Transition in leadership. Improved and expanded facilities. Growing services. The year 2017 will go down as another year where Promise Community Health Center continued to evolve and grow to meet the needs of northwest Iowa. Here are just some of the big stories that filled the pages of Promise’s news blog during the past year: 1. FOUNDING EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR RETIRES Nancy Dykstra celebrates her final "An Evening of Promise" Celebration and Fundraiser as Promise CHC's executive director on Nov. 2. No name has been more synonymous to Promise than Nancy Dykstra, but she now hands off the reins to new leadership. Dykstra – who played an integral role in the planning and establishment of Promise and then became its founding executive director in 2008 – announced in July her plans to retire at the end of the year. As executive director, Dykstra navigated Promise through an arduous four-year campaign to obtain its designation as a Federally Qualified Health Cente...

SIOUX CENTER – Heidy Hernandez hopes to make patients feel welcome and feel like they are in the best place they can be when they come into Promise Community Health Center. As a new receptionist at Promise, she will be one of the first persons they will see. Heidy Hernandez wants to make patients feel welcome as they come into Promise Community Health Center. She recently assumed her role as a receptionist at the health center. “I love to help people in their needs, and Promise is the best place to do that,” she said. Heidy, who is bilingual in English and Spanish, grew up in South Sioux City, NE. She attended high school there and now is taking classes at Northwest Iowa College in Sheldon. She worked at Orange City Health System, 2011-2013; at Rock Industries in Rock Valley, 2013-17; and at Hope Haven for a few months before starting at Promise. She’s now happy to be at Promise. “It has been a very good organization by helping the communities around Sioux County,” Heidy said. “Many pe...

SIOUX CENTER – All the family wanted for Christmas was: Socks. The family did get socks – lots of socks. But they received so much more. The Murillo family – parents Rodolfo and Luz and children Allisson, 9, Natalie, 7, and Kassandra, 4  – were blessed with gifts from a Christmas-giving project by Doon Christian School. The family of Rodolfo and Luz Murillo of Hawarden drove away from Promise Community Health Center in Sioux Center on Wednesday afternoon with a pickup filled with gifts, thanks to the Christmas-giving spirit of the 20 students, three teachers and parents of Doon Christian School. “We’re very grateful,” Rodolfo said through an interpreter, with an expression of amazement and gratitude. “We weren’t expecting all this. Thank you very much.” Mary Leusink, the teacher for grades K-2, said Doon Christian School does a Christmas-giving project every year to show the students that “it is better to give than receive.” In past years, school personnel easily could t...

SIOUX CENTER – A group of five nursing students from Northwestern College in Orange City studied how Promise Community Health Center in Sioux Center could further enhance its health education methods. The students – Bethany Los, Blair Montgomery, Katie Bosch, Allison Daugherty and Kathryn Elliot – presented the findings of their senior research project Tuesday at Promise. Bethany Los, Blair Montgomery, Katie Bosch, Allison Daugherty and Kathryn Elliot, senior nursing students at Northwestern College in Orange City, present the the findings of their research about patient health education to staff members Tuesday at Promise Community Health Center in Sioux Center. For the semester-long study, the group answered the following clinical question: “How does the education provided to patients at Promise Community Health Center compare to current evidence-based best practice methods regarding health education?” “We found that what you are currently doing is meeting evidence-based practice...