Brooke Thomas
Quality Improvement Advisor
Brooke earned her Bachelor’s from Western State College in Kinesiology and Business Administration in 2000. Soon after, she moved to the Grand Valley and began working for the Mesa County Health Department as a Health Educator, collaborating with other community entities around prevention efforts, education and policy. Brooke was also a Program Manager for Girl Scouts of Colorado, creating and implementing educational programs for youth and adults around science, communication and life skills, bully prevention, and self-empowerment. Brooke’s most notable professional accomplishments focus on her collaboration with Rocky Mountain Health Plans to create and implement a program for physicians to provide cessation services to their pregnant patients. The program encompassed training and implementation of the “5 A’s” and provided education on recognizing Prochaska’s “Stages of Change in Behavior.” The program contributed to a 6% decrease in tobacco use among pregnant patients in Mesa County over an eight-month period and was recognized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Brooke has been a presenter at national conferences across the US and has served on multiple boards on the Western Slope such as the Mesa County Women’s Network, Rocky Mountain Health Plan’s Annual Women’s Wellness Fair and Colorado West Mental Health’s Red Baron Ball. In her role as a Quality Improvement Advisor with the Colorado Beacon Consortium, Brooke has successfully written Maintenance of Certification applications to the American Boards of Family Medicine, Pediatrics and Internal Medicine, in addition to recruiting practices to the Beacon program and implementing the Beacon curriculum.
(970) 248-8725 direct
(970) 964-8928 cell
Brooke.Thomas@coloradobeaconconsortium.org
Cathie Nicholson
Quality Improvement Advisor
Cathie has managed health education programs for over 15 years. She worked under governors Lawton Chiles and Jeb Bush in Florida to establish one of the most effective and widely known tobacco prevention programs in the country. Cathie has received numerous awards and recognition’s from the State of Florida and Colorado for outstanding prevention programs she created. Cathie has conducted training’s and presentations across the nation to help other states increase their success in implementing effective health initiative programs and on creating and maintaining successful partnerships. She developed a 5A’s (Ask, Advise, Assess, Assist, Arrange) and Tobacco 101 training for Mesa State College Nursing School that has resulted in every Nursing student at Mesa State being trained on the types of tobacco being used today and how to address tobacco use and cessation with every patient. Cathie has been working with healthcare providers on the western slope of Colorado for over 10 years to improve healthcare and reduce tobacco use though such tools as the 5A’s, Motivation Interviewing and implementation of the Model for Improvement. Cathie utilized materials from the American Cancer Society and other nationally recognized programs to develop a personalized cessation program for tobacco users. To date over 1000 tobacco users have participated in the “Break Free” program, with quit rates averaging 40% of participants. Cathie is a certified Cessation Counselor receiving her cessation training from Mayo Clinic and the American Cancer Society. She has a Bachelor of Science in Public Relations and Marketing.
(970) 248-5042 direct
(970) 248-5042 cell
