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Women In Wellness: Katie Gallagher of Candor Health Education On The Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help Support People’s Journey Towards Better Wellbeing

An Interview With Candice Georgiadis

Set goals. These may be goals to improve your work life, home life, spiritual life, emotional, mental or physical health. Whatever you are looking to achieve, remember that even small changes toward that goal can make a big difference. If you have ever read about someone’s weight loss success story, it probably included a series of small changes that a person made and sustained over time to achieve a larger weight loss goal.

As a part of my series about women in wellness, I had the pleasure of interviewing Katie Gallagher.

Katie is a veteran educator and school administrator. In her current role as Director of Education at Candor Health Education, she is able to join her experience as an educator with her passion for improving the physical and emotional health and wellness of young people.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Our readers would love to “get to know you” better. Can you share your “backstory” with us?

Sure! I spent over twenty years as a teacher and administrator at the elementary and middle school levels before joining Candor Health Education. At Candor, we provide substance abuse prevention and sex education programs to students in 4th-8th grade. Candor has provided the perfect opportunity for me to utilize my expertise in education to support young people in making informed decisions about their health and well-being. Nothing is more important than the mental and physical health of the young people in our schools.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? What were the main lessons or takeaways from that story?

As I began my career as an administrator, I thought I had things pretty figured out. I had taught for a while and had been involved in strategic planning initiatives at a schoolwide level. However, I had a Head of School who was constantly checking in with me and offering advice. At the time, I saw this as being overbearing and micromanaging, but now realize how much I learned from her and how generous it was of her to take so much time to help me learn and grow. Never underestimate the importance of good mentorship! Take it where you can get it!

It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about a mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

As a teacher, I made the mistake of thinking more was better, more reading, more facts, more homework. Now looking back, it is so clear that less is more. Cramming more facts into young people, is not the way to help them learn. They need opportunities to connect to the information they are learning to the world around them, opportunities to apply new ideas and test them out. As we design new health curriculum at Candor, I keep this in mind. Students may only remember a few key facts from a health program, but they will remember stories, real-life examples and how they can apply the information they learn.

Let’s jump to our main focus. When it comes to health and wellness, how is the work you are doing helping to make a bigger impact in the world?

Our work at Candor Health Education is to provide primary prevention to young people in the areas of substance abuse and sex education. We know that prevention is critical to supporting health and wellness. Young people need to have the knowledge about how to protect themselves, so that they are able to make informed decisions when situations present themselves. There is plenty of research to support the old adage “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

Can you share your top five “lifestyle tweaks” that you believe will help support people’s journey towards better wellbeing? Please give an example or story for each.

For me, wellbeing is all about balance. It is something I am always striving for, but here are a few things that have helped me along the way:

  • Practice gratitude. It is a scientific fact that our brains naturally tend to focus on the negative. Train your brain by explicitly practicing gratitude. Try keeping a gratitude journal, or reaching out to others to say “thank you.”
  • Block out time for the things that are important to you. That may be exercise, a hobby, spending time with family, or any of a number of things. Guard and protect that time. If you don’t take time to fill up your tank, you will not be able to go the distance in other areas of your life.
  • Make time for friends. Friends are there through ups and downs and often know you better than anyone. Keep in touch, find time for coffee, a walk, a lunch or a dinner. Sometimes you need to be with someone who just “gets it.”
  • Get rest. This may be in the form of a regular daily break, a beach vacation or simply getting to bed “on time.” When I am not rested, I find myself short-tempered, more anxious and easily frustrated. It is amazing what some rest and relaxation will do.
  • Set goals. These may be goals to improve your work life, home life, spiritual life, emotional, mental or physical health. Whatever you are looking to achieve, remember that even small changes toward that goal can make a big difference. If you have ever read about someone’s weight loss success story, it probably included a series of small changes that a person made and sustained over time to achieve a larger weight loss goal.

If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of wellness to the most amount of people, what would that be?

I would start a wellness movement in schools around connection: faculty and staff building real connections with students so that students feel engaged and heard in their school communities, students participating in more programs and activities and having more opportunities to contribute and lead in their school communities. In our busy, on-line lives, we are not building enough real-world, real-time connections with one another. By investing in this, we will have young people who grow up with the social skills, confidence and self-esteem needed to navigate the ups and downs of adulthood.

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why?

Here is a short list of things that I have learned that I wish I had known at the start:

  • It is okay if you don’t know what your “passion” is at the start of your career journey, sometimes you don’t know until you dive in and give something a try. One experience will lead to another and you will gain a clearer sense of your interests, strengths and passions.
  • No matter what you do, keep people first. By this I mean, the key to success in any field is building connections with others, putting the needs of others at the forefront of what you do and how you do it. It is through these connections that you will feel fulfilled and you will grow the most.
  • Sometimes while in the trenches, you can get bogged down in the day to day. It can be hard to see the good you are doing but stay the course. Keep the end goal in mind and revisit it frequently to help you push forward.
  • Expect to have setbacks. Life is unpredictable and does not happen along a linear path. When something does not go as expected, regroup, set a plan, lean on others and move forward.
  • There will be great days and not-so-great days. Don’t let yourself focus too long on the negative. You will find that the great days outnumber the not-so-great.

Sustainability, veganism, mental health, and environmental changes are big topics at the moment. Which one of these causes is dearest to you, and why?

Mental health is the cause dearest to me. Often when someone is struggling with mental health it is invisible to those around them, yet it pervades every aspect of that person’s life, often becoming very debilitating. Since mental health is often “hidden” from view, too often people struggle alone. Mental health must be something that we need to talk about more and that we get more resources behind. Resources include everything from increased social emotional learning in our schools to therapeutic and clinical support.

What is the best way for our readers to further follow your work online?

Please find more information at www.candorhealthed.org. I encourage you to subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date on issues impacting young people today.

Thank you for these fantastic insights! We wish you continued success and good health.

Women In Wellness: Katie Gallagher of Candor Health Education On The Five Lifestyle Tweaks That… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.