Restoring Balance: The Story Behind Kimbah Healthcare Solutions

People ask me why I started this practice. The honest answer is that after more than twenty years inside tribal, IHS, federal, and community health systems, I kept seeing the same thing: dedicated teams doing heroic work inside structures that quietly worked against them. I didn't want to write another report about it. I wanted to help fix it, alongside the people living it.

I didn't arrive here as an outsider. My work is grounded in relationships — including a clan relationship given by my 'adopted' Shimá, Darlene — and in a long, specific commitment to Diné and Southwest tribal communities. Two of the frameworks I carry, the Madden Salutogenic Coherence Practice Model and Journey to Salutogenesis, were built from the ground up in Diné clinical settings, not borrowed from somewhere else and dressed up.

What the work looks like

Most of what I do lives in the space between a good intention and a working system. A tribal health center knows its Purchased/Referred Care program is leaking but can't find where. A grant is about to lapse with dollars unspent. High-risk patients keep cycling back because no one owns their journey across departments. Those are the knots I help untangle — quietly, practically, and with respect for the people already carrying the load.

Why "restoring balance"

In Diné teaching, Hózhó is harmony and balance, and K'é is kinship — the understanding that the people we serve are Relatives, not cases. That isn't decoration for me. It's the standard I hold the work to. When a program runs well enough to last, when a nurse is developed instead of burned out, when a Relative finally has someone walking alongside them — that's balance. None of it is flashy. All of it strengthens communities.

If any of that sounds like your team, I'm always glad to think it through together.

I don't carry this work alone. It began with teachers I was lucky to learn from directly. In my first semester of nursing school at UT Health San Antonio, my clinical instructor, Dr. Arevalo, introduced me to Dr. Carrie Jo Braden and the Research Scholars Program. Dr. Braden became my mentor and the foundation of how I understand uncertainty in illness, self-help, resilience, and salutogenesis. Dr. Lesser, my mental health nursing professor, worked closely with prosumers and embraced community — including Indigenous communities. And it was Dr. Jill Hayes whose elective brought a group of us from the UTHSCSA School of Nursing out to Chinle, Arizona, where I was assigned a clinical day with Darlene — and the rest, as they say, is history. What I build now stands on what they gave me and my dedication to serve comes from a promise, to “always take care of our people” - one I’ve been able to keep my entire career. I’m here to help. I’m here to serve. I bring the best of everything I’ve learned and implemented in practice, everything that has been successful, with me on my journeys to help

build strong, efficient, culturally grounded, quality systems, giving back the best to our Relatives, Relatives that are not only our patients, but also our fellow employees. I’m ready to walk with you on your journey. Let’s connect.