2016 Health Care Champions Technician: Christie Drew

Christie Drew has known she wanted to help people since middle school. Years later, she is a paramedic and community outreach coordinator for CoxHealth.  

Serving as a full-time, on-ambulance emergency medical technician and paramedic for the past 11 years, a few years ago Drew began assisting with public relations and community outreach for the department.

Her passion to serve others led her to create the position. Now, Drew promotes health and safety communitywide.

“I have seen firsthand the injuries and health related issues which could have been avoided if education and resources had been provided,” Drew says.

The helpful reach took Drew more than two years to build and implement, but she says the time put in was worth it.

“Having the passion and drive to provide others with what they may not otherwise have ... is more rewarding than anything I could have for myself,” Drew says.

As a paramedic, Drew has seen many preventable injuries. Through her community outreach, she is working to educate residents on car seat safety, bike and helmet safety, health education and industrial workplace injury prevention. Most recently, Drew secured a $2,000 grant to promote the car seat safety program to educate families on the appropriate way to install and use child safety restraints. The grant will allow program officials to purchase and provide new car seats to residents in its service area.

Drew knows her efforts are paying off.

A few days after giving a presentation to fourth and fifth graders on bike and helmet safety, a teacher reached out to Drew. After learning the functions of the brain and its importance for life, a student called his dad and refused to ride his bike home without his helmet.

Moments like these make it worthwhile for Drew.

“If even one of these programs can save a life, it will have been worth it,” she says.

Drew is in the process of kickstarting a handful of new programs she hopes to implement over the next several months.

Her work hasn’t gone unnoticed by her boss.

“Christie has consistently demonstrated a passion for caring for both her patients and the citizens of the community,” says CoxHealth EMS Director Mark Alexander.

Drew’s work does not end there. She also serves as president of the Christian County Family Crisis Center Board of Directors, as a board member for Nixa Care to Learn and Ozark’s Boosters Club, and as a mentor to the alternative high schools in Springfield, Ozark and Nixa.

Drew knows she’s come a long way from the young girl who simply wanted to help people, but  she hasn’t forgotten the struggle and people who helped her achieve her goals. As a single mother in high school, Drew says a $500 scholarship she received allowed her to pursue her passion and take an EMT class.

She wants to pay that forward. To help students obtain their EMT training, Drew created the Bless it Forward Scholarship, offering funds to one student from a local alternative school.

“Even if it is changing one life at a time, it is one more life that could have possibly been damaged or lost,” she says.