Welcome to “Paying it Forward,” a monthly interview series made possible by Piedmont Health. In this series, we hear from the folks at Piedmont about the importance of community health centers – and why they chose a career in community health.
This month, Aaron welcomes Karen Smith, Piedmont’s director of behavioral health. Smith grew up in Honduras while that country was under a military dictatorship, and she says that experience sparked a lifelong interest in promoting social justice – which led her first into the field of social work, and then to a career in community health.
“I feel like I was meant to be in behavioral health,” she says. “And our population (at Piedmont) is primarily individuals who are marginalized. So I love the work I do.”
Today, though, Smith is working less directly with patients themselves. That’s partly because her role at Piedmont is more administrative, but it’s also for a sad reason: she says she dialed back her clinical work earlier this year, after her husband passed away in February…