Good afternoon.

Hi.

Can you please share your name and a little bit about yourself?

My name is Kathy. I am a public health nurse at the Village of Greenville Health Department. I've been here since 2014. I have been teaching stepping on class through Wisconsin Institute of healthy agents since 2018. We just missed times during COVID and in the NADA. At least try to get once a year anything specific.

I am so sorry. I don't know where this goes. When the recording stop, I don't know where it goes, but I'll figure that out. Are you from Milwaukee?

I was born in Milwaukee. I lived in Racine county then since third grade and I live up in Waukesha, but I work here in Greendale.

Okay.

So. And I went to school in Oshkosh and I've sort of been a lot of places.

Yeah. Yeah. Can you share a little bit about your journey into facilitating health programs for. For older adults? What motivates you to do this work?

I think I'm motivated by the people that I'm working with. I still have people come up to me and tell me that it was a great experience for them and it did help them. And those people who are still using the exercises to prevent falls and increase their strength and balancing, they're still seeing a positive effect from it. So it's the people coming back to me when I run into them in the future that say that it was still great. What also motivates me is the word of mouth. People go to their friends and their relatives and they say, this is a great class. Please take this. I can see that there's positivity going out into the community.

Right. Is there a personal story or experience that inspired you to focus on health and wellness in older adulthood?

I don't know if there's a personal experience. I think personally I like the health and wellness. I like the older adult population working here at the village of Greendell. I'm sort of all over a generalist person catch all. So I do a little bit this, a little bit that. My main preference would be the older adults. I have parents that are aging. They're in their 80s and 90s.

They're very. They're pretty active people. I just had an older gentleman that came over to the house Sunday that had also was a very active person. We had known him for many, many years. I see where it benefits with the keeping active and how they do so much better. I also know older adults that aren't as physically active. It shows. It very much shows.

They don't Move as well. They very unsteady. So I can see within my own family and the older adult friends that we have come in contact with that there's definite benefits to that physical, the exercising and things like that. So that, that's what motivates me is just the people in my life.

Okay, that makes sense. What are the most significant benefits would you say participants gain from these programs?

Oh, well, what we have says, you know, is they, they have many benefits. The statistics and everything are there for you to see as far as improving your stance, improving your balance, improving that. Personally, if I just get rid of all the statistics, you know, what I do see is from the seven days of stepping on week one to week seven, I have again the positivity coming back to me. But I really am doing better. I really do feel more steady. I really feel better and secure. And then it's just the keeping these people. One of our goals here as a public health department is for the people to age in place, to stay where you want to stay.

And as long as I can see that that's positive, you know, that's, that's what also what would get me, you know, going and what I can see happening. So. And there are people who I taught in 2018. I still keep in contact with a few of them and they're not doing so bad.