Bring.Your.Brave., a free event at the Martin Center for the Arts on Tuesday, Jan. 30, features the inspiring stories of local women who have been affected by breast and ovarian cancer – all with the goal of saving lives. Mammograms save lives, but women don’t always take the time to schedule a screening. That’s why the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recruited support from Ballad Health last fall to collect and record the stories of eight local women as a way to educate and help families discuss the risks of hereditary breast and ovarian cancer. “Our storytelling team was asked to find women willing to spend an entire weekend sharing and recording their emotional and inspiring stories to help CDC create these videos to help educate rural women about the importance of being screened,” says Deborah Lowery, Ballad Health’s Director of Communications, Storytelling. “Each woman was so passionate about sharing their story to…

JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. – Johnson City Medical Center’s interim chief executive officer, Kenny Shafer, recently opened a piece of mail all the way from California. A 93-year-old man had found a circa 1939 postcard of JCMC – then Memorial Hospital – in a local antique store and decided to mail it across the country to the hospital. “The card itself is an old-time classic,” the man wrote in his letter. “I said to myself, ‘By golly, I think I’ll send it home where it can be appreciated.’ Our heritage is important to all of us. At any rate, I hope it will brighten your day.” Kenny shared the story with the JCMC staff along with a photo of the antique postcard. He noted that the card’s timely arrival coincided with the hospital’s 110th anniversary and plans for a mural honoring current and past teams who have served the community. According to his letter, the thoughtful…

JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. – When the group Alabama heard about Johnson City Medical Center’s “Thank Your Angel” wall, inspired by their song “Angels Among Us,” the band leader Randy Owen decided to pick up the phone and call interim hospital CEO Kenny Shafer with a message of encouragement for the hospital’s team members. “He told me he’s always been a great admirer of medicine and wanted to offer blessings and encouragement to the team here,” Kenny said about the call from Randy Owen, the famous band’s lead singer. “He went on about how special that song is to him and how every time he sings it, he struggles to get through it. We spoke for 10 to 15 minutes.” To say Owen has been a great admirer of medicine is an understatement. The country music star is the founder of Country Cares for St. Jude Kids, an organization he started more than 30 years ago…

Earlier this fall, torrential rains led to floodwaters and mudslides that avalanched down mountain slopes, wreaking total destruction in the Buchanan County town of Hurley, Virginia. The surge wiped out roads and bridges and crashed into houses, leaving families homeless in a matter of minutes. “It was just heartbreaking,” said Ashley White, lab services manager at Russell County Hospital. “Nobody hesitated to help; team members in our department are just very giving people and are always doing something to help out those in our community.” At first, the community requested cleaning supplies, so the team members collected money and had plans to purchase supplies to donate. Volunteers responded so quickly that soon there were more supplies than needed. “We were trying to think of another way to help,” Ashley said. “We heard that some families were staying in a hotel. So we called the hotel and asked if they would identify the family with the…

Reagan Boggs is living proof that there’s more than one way to tell a story. She does it through singing, songwriting, narrating audiobooks, and through analyzing data to find the stories Ballad Health shares with the world.  Reagan Boggs loves telling stories. She does it with numbers every day, as leader of Ballad Health’s Data & Analytics team in the IT department. “All data does is tell stories,” she said. “It brings together data like how many people are in the hospital, how many people have been vaccinated – that’s a story.” But when she’s at home, her storytelling takes a different form. There, she spends hours in her home studio, recording stories for audiobooks in her soft, soothing Appalachian accent. “I recently finished recording one called Revelator, an Appalachian sci-fi by Dale Gregory,” she said. “It’s a really good story and was just released. “But it’s harder work than people think. For this one,…

JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. – Bedside storytellers haven’t visited patients and staff at Franklin Woods Community Hospital since March 2020. But during the two years before the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) limited volunteers, they were a welcome sight to patients and staff, who enjoyed “story breaks” and the joy the tellers spread to patients – which also actually helped reduce anxiety and physical pain. Broad-smiling storyteller Jeff Stratton was a regular on the hospital’s family birth center, med-surge and ICU floors. During that time, he said he did his best to lift staff spirits and bring smiles to the hardworking frontline workers. As the pandemic began to hit our area, Jeff and his wife, Jolene, moved to Portugal. Then, as it worsened, he wanted to find a way to express “obrigado” (Portuguese for “thanks”) to the Franklin Woods staff for their “efforts in dealing with the pandemic and all its accompanying problems.” Jeff arranged for cookie cakes to be…

As part of a giveaway of tickets for Speedway in Lights, we asked team members to submit their favorite Christmas holiday traditions, and we received hundreds of great responses! (P.S. Ticket winners have already been informed by email.) The submissions ranged from enjoying a big meal with family, to attending a Christmas service at church, to watching Christmas movies and decorating cookies, to telling the story of Christmas from The Bible. Attending Speedway in Lights was a big favorite, and so was playing elf on the shelf. Many people wrote about the importance of remembering family members who were part of traditions but have passed away and are now dearly missed. Food was a big part of the holidays for most of our team members who submitted answers – everything from the traditional fare to cheeseburgers, seafood, pizza, breakfast burritos, chicken wings, cinnamon rolls and Chinese food. One other overriding theme was pajamas: It seems…