By Aidan Mortensen | KOAL News

The conference room of the Sure Stay Plus Hotel was filled to the brim as the Carbon County Chamber of Commerce gathered for its monthly luncheon on Thursday, Aug. 21. As is tradition, the Chamber spotlighted several businesses and organizations within Carbon County working to better the community.

On the docket this month were spotlights for Huntsman at Home, Eastern Utah Women’s Health and Utah State University Eastern Men’s soccer.

Opening the festivities was Danielle Pendergrass, representing Eastern Utah Women’s Health. “I’m obsessed with Women’s Health, and I’m a big nerd. And I think you want your health care provider to be a nerd to dive deep to get themselves educated and really look at things that are changing,” said Pendergrass. “They changed the menopause guidelines two and a half years ago to where they’ve taken off Black Box warnings and everything for hormone replacement therapy and have really changed the way in which we are helping women.”

With the changing landscape, Pendergrass became a board-certified menopause expert, which led to a mass influx of patients. Due to this, Pedergrass created a Menopause Symposium, which will be held on Saturday, Sept. 27.

“You are going to learn so much about menopause,” she said. “One in 10 women will walk away from a job that they’ve absolutely loved and adored because of the menopause transition, they’re either not getting supported. They don’t understand what’s going on, or they don’t have supportive people that they’re working with.

So, that’s the economic burden of it. These also show that if you have access to knowledgeable providers, you have access to hormone replacement therapy and you have programs for not only managers, but for employees.”

To register for the Menopause Symposium, text 435-637-0313.

Next to the mic was Chris Waite from Huntsman at Home,” Being in a rural area, cancer care is really hard to come by. We have patients who have to travel hours and hours to get to where they’re going. Initially, the Huntsman at Home program covered just Salt Lake County, people who lived within 20 miles of the Huntsman Cancer Institute. But in July of 2021, it was expanded to cover Carbon, Emery and Grand counties.”

He continued,” In the last four years, the Huntsman at Home Rural program has touched over 160 patients and families that are battling cancer in our communities, bringing much-needed care to their homes. As a quality improvement program, our goal is to prevent unheated hospitalizations, streamline care, and reduce the burden of traveling to Salt Lake City for these patients.”

To aid in this mission, the Institute was awarded a PARADIGM grant from the U.S. Department of Defense, a program designed to provide high-quality care to rural areas across the country. 

“This will allow us to provide expanded and enhanced access to cancer care in these three counties,” explained Waite. “Here we will be getting a mobile clinic van where we will be able to provide more direct cancer care, certain chemotherapies and imaging labs, things like that will be able to be provided at the patient’s home.”

Closing his time at the podium, Waite stated,” We’re just excited to work with the community on this and move forward. Amazing things are coming.”

Rounding out the spotlights was USU Eastern Men’s Soccer Coach Bruce Palmbaum. “Part of the exciting thing about our team is we have 18 international students on our team, so we had two returning and 16 new players … Just to give you some idea, the challenge this year of bringing in 16 International players, not so easy, but we managed to do it.”

Palmbaum’s time in soccer includes stints as a player both domestically and internationally, and coaching experience ranging from D1 to NAIA.

Closing his time, Palmbaum encouraged attendees to get out and cheer on the team: “It’s amazing if you have a chance. We play on Thursdays and Saturdays. A lot of times they’re at home. It’s posted on the website, and it’s really a fun time, so if you want to come, check it out!”

Castle Country Radio would like to congratulate all these businesses and organizations on their dedication to improving the Castle Country.