Terrea Harper, a peer recovery specialist in the Warm Hand Off program of AMH's Center for Behavioral and Addiction Medicine unit, was just doing her job Oct. 27, 2020, as she helped a patient in the Emergency Room. But those few hours together impacted Shamyria Wingate so much that she named her baby after Terrea when she was born in January 2021.

The Alton Memorial Hospital Emergency Medical Services (EMS) team is aiming to reduce hospital readmissions by instituting the Mobile Integrated Health (MIH) Community Paramedic Program. The MIH program – the only such hospital-based EMS program in this part of the state -- is completely free of charge to patients, and is referral-based by providers to ensure that only chronically ill, high-risk patients are enrolled

Ruth Kvistad, an EMT with Alton Memorial Hospital’s EMS team since November 2020, has even loftier goals. She graduated cum laude from the University of Missouri–St. Louis  last year with a BA in philosophy and has also completed premed studies. Ruth has been accepted into the MD/JD (Juris Doctor) program at Southern Illinois University. But her admiration for EMTs is firm thanks to an unforgettable experience as a young girl.

Medicine hardly seemed like a calling for Brian Fogarty when he was finishing high school in 2011. But the Alton Memorial Hospital paramedic has learned things about himself he never imagined and is now on the way to medical school.

Colon cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States. The lifetime risk of developing colon cancer is as much as 4.3 percent in the general population and higher if you have a family history of the disease. Colon cancer can be curable if detected early, as pre-cancerous lesions can be removed during a colonoscopy. David Henkhaus of Alton is one who knows about this, from both a positive and negative point of view.