Rachel Cameron, Kingfisher nurse practitioner and founder of Trail Creek Wellness Center, was recognized Friday as one of the state’s “Health Care Heroes.”

Cameron was named among 44 medical practitioners, researchers, first responders and administrators across the state whose professional and volunteer service goes beyond what is required by their profession.

Cameron and other honorees were guests at an awards luncheon Friday where she was presented with a medal and plaque recognizing her achievement.

Her photo and profile also appeared in a commemorative magazine published Monday as a supplement to theJournal Record, which sponsored the award.

“I was very honored and humbled to be included among this group of very worthy recipients,” Cameron said. “Many of them were mentors and other professionals I had worked with in the past.”

Among them was Terri White, former commissioner of the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, and Dr. David Kendrick, chair of the University of Oklahoma School of Community Medicine’s medical informatics department.

Cameron worked at the county health department when White served as MHSAS commissioner and also served with her on a number of state committees.

She participated with Kendrick in a state think tank last fall focused on the social determinants of health.

Cameron said her desire to work in the health care industry began in childhood, growing up on the family farm and taking care of all sorts of animals — dogs, cats, rabbits, chickens, horses and cattle.

“That experience gave me an expansive opportunity to care for the healthy and the sick,” she said.

Cameron first as a public health nurse for the Kingfisher County Health Department, serving as school nurse at a number of local districts in addition to helping initiate community health and fitness activities.

Cameron said working in public health gave her a wide angle view of the full spectrum of community health and wellness needs beyond traditional medicine and sparked her interest in advancing her skills to open a wellness center.

“That’s what I wrote in my application for nurse practitioner school at OU that I would open a wellness clinic in Kingfisher within five years of graduation,” she said. “I think that’s partially how I got in — they wanted people who would go back and work in their communities.”

She missed that five-year mark by only a couple of years.

But in the meantime, Cameron worked at Krablin Medical Clinic and then at a freestanding Mercy clinic with Physicians Assistant Bridget Keast, while finding lots of ways to put her nurse practitioner degree to work after her regular office hours.

Six years ago, she helped found the Compassion Clinic, a ministry of the First Baptist Church that provides free health care and prescription medicine at a monthly clinic.

Cameron is one of the volunteer providers who works at the clinic, which treats hundreds of patients on the second Monday of every month, beginning at 5:30 p.m. and ending when the last patient in line has been seen.

(That was about 11:30 p.m. this week, which is fairly typical.)

She also has been involved with the Kingfisher Community Collaborative since 2004, working with that umbrella organization to obtain grants and implement community health and wellness programs.

“Being part of the collaborative was always inspirational,” she said. “Being able to see all the pieces that make up community wellness — counseling, medical, spiritual, mental health that whole wrap-around of services.”

Cameron also became involved in the county’s Multidisciplinary Child Abuse Response Team, a group involving law enforcement, prosecutors, social services and medical personnel to aid in county child abuse investigations and provide services to child victims.

Cameron is trained and certified in conducting forensic child abuse examinations and recently obtained certification as a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner, which allows her to complete examinations of rape victims and collect evidence for state lab analysis.

She also has been instrumental in expanding the multidisciplinary team’s focus to include providing services to domestic violence victims and aiding in the investigation and prosecution of their attackers.

In 2018, the pieces fell into place for Cameron to purchase the former Krablin Medical Center building and realize her dream of opening Trail Creek Wellness Center with she and Keast as primary care providers along with other practitioners.

In addition to traditional medical services, the clinic includes mental health counseling, lab services, nutrition, massage therapy, hydration therapy, hormone therapy and more.

Cameron said the center’s services are research based and she and Keast are always open to adding new treatments suggested by patients if they are backed by solid medical evidence.

They are establishing collaborations with other providers to provide local specialty care in psychiatry, orthopedics, cardiology, gastroenterology and ear, nose and throat.

“As much as possible, we try to be responsive to our patients’ needs and provide services locally to save them a trip out of town,” she said.

The center also provides telemedicine services as well as monthly house calls for nursing home and elderly homebound patients.

She and Keast, who has worked as a physicians assistant for 40 years, are also involved in state advocacy efforts for their professions.

The two of them have worked to create a collaboration between the separate state associations for nurse practitioners and physicians assistants to advance state legislation that is in the best interest of both organizations, including expanding the scope of service they can provide.

Cameron also serves on the board of Northwest Oklahoma Rural Health Projects Inc. and participated last fall in a think tank sponsored by the Oklahoma Primary Healthcare Improvement Cooperative that focused on social factors that impact community health care.

Also attending the awards luncheon Friday were Cameron’s husband Dave, two of their children, Alyssa, 22, and Caleb, 19, her mother Niki Smith and mother-in-law Pattie Cameron, Keast and office manager Carrie Mueggenborg.

Her oldest son Cole, 25, was unable to attend.