Kevin Zwiers, the Community Education Manager of Behavioral Health Services for Community Healthcare System, is a Northwest Indiana native who currently lives in Lowell with his wife, Allison, and 5-year old identical twin boys, Cal and Ryne. Zwiers attended college at Purdue University Calumet where he received a degree in communications. He is also currently taking online classes through Western Governors University to obtain his master’s in business administration.
“I am trying to do a 2-year program in 1 year, all while being a supportive husband, dedicated father, a good student, and working for Community Healthcare System,” Zwiers said.
As the Community Education Manager of Behavioral Health Services, Zwiers brings awareness and educates different healthcare locations on ways to assist mentally ill patients.
“It’s all about raising awareness, creating an educational program, and effectively implementing a targeted marketing plan for the system to assist mentally ill patients, and to be able to help them in a hospital atmosphere and hopefully disposition them to the next level of care after that,” he stated.
In his position, Zwiers serves at all the Community Healthcare System locations in the area.
“We partner with the three hospitals in our system, the four urgent cares, the outpatient offices, and other potential referral sources. All of the units are physically located out of St. Catherine Hospital, but I support all the hospitals of Community Healthcare System, which encompasses St. Catherine Hospital in East Chicago, Community Hospital in Munster, and St. Mary Medical Center in Hobart” he explained.
Zwiers’ days are far from average on a day-to-day basis, but he is all about educating and informing.
“One of my primary roles is to educate employees, from primary care physicians to nurse practitioners, at our health campuses on ways to be a resource to assist individuals with any kind of behavioral needs. I also present new employee orientation at all three of the hospitals,” he said.
A way that Zwiers spreads the word is through an educational program that has been developed over the years.
“We have developed a program that goes out into the community that partners with other institutions to be able to identify individuals that may be more combative to determine how we can properly intervene before it reaches a potential agitated state,” he said. “We are doing that with partnerships with other healthcare agencies in the area, which helps promotes who we are and what we do. This then incentivizes them to then have us come in because we are offering this free service.”
His favorite part about working in Behavioral Health Services is ultimately being able to inform the healthcare community.
“I love what I do, and because of that it makes my job easy. It is really rewarding to have the opportunity to help a patient population that not very many people want to help,” he said. “We are able to help ill individuals, and we do it and we do it well. I like being able to change peoples’ mindsets and get people to think very similar to me in the sense that the brain is like any other organ in the body, so why don’t we treat it that way?”
Another favorite part about his job is being able to meet and interact with a ton of different people.
“I also love talking and interacting with people. From administration to cafeteria employees, I love talking to them all and creating awareness about what I am passionate about most,” he said.
Outside of working and taking MBA classes, he enjoys spending the majority of his time with his family, golfing, hanging out with his tight-knit group of friends, and watching baseball.
“I am a Cubs fan and my wife is a White Sox fan, so it is very much house divided… however, we enjoy watching baseball together,” he said laughing.