The coronavirus pandemic has brought a form of skepticism toward our health care system like never before. As the country battles the virus and dabbles in the idea of reforming the health care system, Chenelle Harris has been marketing her new lifestyle management system to the healthcare world.
Harris, a Florida A&M University alumna, has launched her new lifestyle management system, Count My Health, during the pandemic and has garnered quite a bit of attraction.
Her Maryland-based lifestyle management system partners with different health plans to help their members increase sustainable change in their behaviors by targeting social and cultural determinants.
Harris speaks passionately of her solution and she feels that one of the greatest aspects of the planning behind it is her background in the health field.
“I’ve been on both sides of the coin. I’ve been the vice president chief marketing officer of United Medical Center in D.C where I worked very closely with the community that we helped. I’ve also been the one to need that help when I was younger and living independently for the first time. I’ve been able to see exactly how the system works on both sides.”
Harris’ aspirations for a career in the health industry started at a young age. As a young child she remembers her mother, Cheryl Haynes, and her classmates studying in the kitchen for the occupational therapy exams.
Once Haynes graduated from FAMU with her degree in occupational therapy, Harris began going to work with her mother when she opened her business: First Choice Rehab in Tallahassee.
“Working with my mom as a teenager I would say was a pivotal moment. I saw how much she loved her patients and loved working with them. As a young person I was able to bring this fun energy to these spaces and saw how much it influenced people and the connections that were being made as well.” Harris said.
From the outside looking in, one might think that in this family of entrepreneurs that this sense of pride when it comes to owning and operating an establishment might be ingrained in the family’s DNA, but Haynes begs to differ.
“I tried to instill in all my children the possibilities that the world offers. Chenelle has always been very passionate about everything she does. That’s one quality that is needed to work in the health care industry.”
Growing up together Harris and her sister Christin Haynes have taken similar routes and continued the family narrative of entrepreneurship that stems from their mother and father. Haynes didn’t necessarily see businesswoman in her sister’s future, but she did see something similar.
“I never thought that Chenelle would be an entrepreneur, but I could see that she possessed a lot of great leadership qualities,” Haynes said.
With the pandemic continuing to break records for deaths across the world, Harris hopes that with the implantation of Count My Health that it will improve the vulnerable populations that have been hit hard during this time.
“I want Count My Health to provide the support that is needed in these communities that are really suffering during this time. The main objective is to help these populations build legacies of health and wellness for generations to come,” Harris said.