Tammy - Alumni of the Year

 I have known George's sister, Tammy since she was an 11 year old girl and I a 21 year old newly engaged young woman.  As I remember, she was quite excited at the prospect of adding a new sister - ME! And I was really happy to gain a husband plus 2 sisters and a brother!

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I've watched her grow up and become a fantastic aunt to our children and our nieces and nephews.  I have had a front row seat to her educational journey from high school to a bachelors at BYU, then graduating from the University of Utah Medical School.  After that she  added two more advanced degrees - a Masters in Public Administration and Masters in Public Health.  Pretty impressive education!  

Most impressive of all is how she adapted to adding the initials - Mrs. to her name when she married Richard in 2009.  With her lovely personality and with total trust and faith, she entered the Salt Lake Temple a single woman and came out with a husband, 7 children, 3 children-in-law, and 4 grandchildren.  To that mix, more in-laws and more grandchildren have been added.  Tammy has thrived in the chaos of a big family.  Of all her academic and career accolades, I know becoming a wife, mother and grandma is the one she treasures the most. 

I feel blessed to know all these wonderful people.  I call them our 'bonus' family.

When the Romney Institute  picked Tammy as the Alumni of the Year for the Masters of Public Administration program, I was not at all surprised.  She has had a stellar career with Intermountain Health Care.  Here is her quick bio.

Dr. Tamara Sheffield is the Medical Director for Community Health and Prevention and the Medical Director for the Community Pharmacy Immunization Program at Intermountain Healthcare and oversees Intermountain’s immunization efforts.

 

Dr. Sheffield is a past liaison to the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and is currently a member of the ACIP Influenza Work Group. She chaired the group that developed the Utah State immunization registry and currently chairs the Utah Adult Immunization Coalition and Intermountain’s Immunization Community Collaborative focused on increasing Utah rates of influenza vaccine, HPV vaccine and vaccine confidence.

 

As Medical Director for Community Health and Prevention, she is responsible for developing the policy, guidelines, tools, and programs necessary to integrate prevention into primary care clinical practice within Intermountain clinics and hospitals, and for providing clinical guidance to SelectHealth’s efforts to improve quality in the provision of preventive care to its members.

If you live in Utah, you may have seen her on TV or heard her on the radio as she is a frequent 'expert' on immunizations, influenza, COVID, exercise, diet....anything that is considered 'preventative." 

Her speech at her awards luncheon was based on one phrase from the story of Queen Esther in the Bible, "Who knoweth but what thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this.?"

Quoting Tammy, "The COVID pandemic has brought a lot of things into perspective for many of us. During a time of great challenge, I’ve seen people step up and fill roles they never would have expected. And I’ve marveled at the many small miracles put in place over the years that have allowed us to manage and survive in this difficult time. These miracles were brought about by people who were in the right place at the right time doing the right thing “for such a time as this”. 

She then proceeded to list a few of these people:

Former Utah Governor Leavitt's wife Jacquelyn who championed the Utah immunization on-line registries, "can you imagine what our immunization coordination and documentation efforts would have been for the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic where we gave influenza vaccines to our whole state or our current COVID pandemic where almost 3.8 million doses of COVID vaccines have been given in Utah the past 10 months? Jacqueline Leavitt was where she was in the 1990s “for such a time as this.”

Utah Governor Herbert who created a state-wide pandemic planning task force, 2 years before COVID-19 and who was still at the helm when COVID-19 did hit, and with his past experience was leading our public health efforts in Utah, “for such a time as this.”

Sharon Eubank, Director of Latter-day Saints Charities for the past 10 years, is also currently part of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Relief Society presidency and had all the right channels at her disposal to distribute oxygen, medical supplies, and personal protective equipment (specifically masks and gowns) when they were in short supply. She had the resources of the Relief Society to sew those mask and Beehive Clothing to make the gowns. Through the partnership between the Relief Society, Intermountain Healthcare and U of U Health, Project Protect sewed 6 million medical grade masks at a time when that was the only protection we had against the virus. Sister Eubank was in place “for such a time as this.”

 Dr. Linda Leckman had been the voice for Intermountain’s weekly 'Healing for Life' radio spot, and when she retired, she asked Tammy to take her place with the KSL program. Because of that, Tammy was a recognized media voice, so when she needed to provide trusted medical advice about these new COVID vaccines, she had a relationship with KSL and with the listeners, and was able to provide medical advice through the media “for such a time as this”.

When Intermountain’s current CEO, Dr. Marc Harrison came to the organization five years ago, he dramatically changed Intermoutain’s leadership style and structure to promote nimble decision making. The new structure he put in place for daily huddles, and incident command have allowed IHC to take system-wide decisions up and down a tiered chain of command and get them communicated throughout the organization in a matter of hours throughout this pandemic. Dr. Harrison truly came to Intermountain “for such a time as this.”

Tammy ended her speech with these inspiring words, "I am confident you will be changing the world, and am excited for you to have those moments in your life’s work where you can say, “Oh – who knows but I was put here for such a time 

as this.”

Proud brother and sister-in-law at the luncheon.

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