Battling a global pandemic and navigating intensified social injustice has presented unique stressors and circumstances that demand extra vigilance and attention. As a direct provider of healthcare services, it is critical to focus on total wellness needs, which means a core challenge to face is elevating emotional, social, physical, and financial health as key dynamics of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Centurion remains committed to supporting our staff’s total wellness both at work and at home. We built the educational Elevate program of Centurion University on the idea of promoting total employee wellness and dedicated to comprehensive employee wellness of all varieties, addressing the consciousness of every employee through candid conversations and shared experiences covering four core wellness pillars: emotional, financial, physical, and social. As a whole, the educational series offers a regular schedule of learning sessions and panel discussions, strengthened by a blended learning experience that incorporates live presentations, podcasts, articles, and online courses delivered directly to staff. Overall, it provides a comprehensive and meaningful educational opportunity for all Centurion employees to achieve key objectives:

• Demonstrate an awareness of empathy for individual differences in cultural and historical experiences that lead to different emotional reactions
• Build cultural competency and respect for groups and their cultures, languages, identities, traditions, values, and histories
• Provide tools and guidance in recognizing, honoring, and supporting employees and patients with known or unknown traumatic experiences
• Examine how individuals and groups cooperate toward achieving common goals and ideals
• Improve social wellness and awareness, resulting in the increase of positive outcomes for the communities we serve

In 2021, Elevate focused on understanding empathy and challenging our perspectives and ideals by realizing our social blind spots regarding diversity and racial disparities. In 2022, Elevate added a financial wellness series to its regularly scheduled programming to meet more and different employee needs. The session schedule includes:

• Uncovering Blind Spots: Unconscious Bias, Macro & Micro Aggressions
• Money Management
• Investing for Retirement
• Defining Trauma and How It Affects Us
• Stress and Techniques to Cope
• Medicare
• Generational Diversity
• Security & Fraud
• Avoiding Triggers with Healthy Responses to Stressful Situations
• Showing Up with Compassion
• Get Ready to Retire

Through its content and curriculum, Elevate is known for providing "Food for the Soul" and creating "Agents of Change" across Centurion while enabling employees to gain a heightened level of self-awareness as well as an awareness of others. This greater awareness strengthens employees' capacity to respond, connect, and do something different to engage in positive behaviors for a healthier existence. As our employees participate in the important, complex, and often difficult conversations led by the program, they also renew their commitment to accountable allyship in support of diversity, equity, and inclusion for all.