By: Gracie Stotzer
Director’s Note: Over the years, FACTS has educated over 800 medical and health professional students through our elective thanks to our dedicated team and colleagues who have volunteered their time and expertise to teach our students. Over the next 12 months, we plan to feature many of these amazing teachers to showcase them and the important work they do for FACTS. This month, as FACTS plans to expand our educational programs to the nursing community, we want to highlight Teresa Kenney, a women’s health nurse practitioner who has been an integral part of FACTS. She is the reason why our elective students now have live case studies with FABM-trained clinicians as part of their curriculum.
Meet Teresa
Teresa Kenney, APRN-NP, has been an active member and educator in our FACTS program for years, serving as an elective case study leader and a speaker at our conferences. Her call to nursing — and what has now been a nearly 25 year career as a women’s health nurse practitioner — began with a nudge from her father, who thought she would be a great nurse. Following graduation from nursing school, she completed her Master’s in nursing and went on to receive certification as a Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner in 2000. One year later, she also became a FertilityCare Practitioner and NaproTechnology Medical consultant through the Pope Paul VI Institute in Nebraska.
An Early Introduction to Holistic Medicine
Presently, Kenney practices at Sancta Familia Medical in Omaha, Nebraska, and specializes in women’s healthcare throughout the reproductive lifespan. However, her journey to holistic, restorative medicine began in her childhood home.
“My mom was super into natural health and growing up we would always have natural remedies to everything,” recalled Kenney. “Even in our bathroom, I remember there was always Prevention Magazine. I was always aware that preventative health was more than just getting a pap smear or a mammogram, that it had to do with a certain way that we live our life.”
Looking for Answers
This upbringing has shaped the way that Kenney practices medicine today, but it was not a seamless journey from nursing school to a restorative women’s health practice. In graduate school, she began crafting her vision of holistic, preventative nursing but was surprised by the broad applications of oral contraceptive pills (OCPs) for what seemed to be a wide array of challenges in women’s health.
“I really didn’t understand why the birth control pill was being used for everything…because, in my mind, birth control was for birth control,” she said. “I didn’t think that birth control was the remedy for solving all problems in women’s health.”
Confused, she questioned her instructors and preceptors but continued to receive unsatisfying answers. At the time, it seemed that if someone declined the prescription, there was nothing else to offer them — even for common women’s health concerns. This bothered Kenney, but her search for alternatives in women’s healthcare did not start in earnest until she began to experience her own cycle-related issues.
“I realized in my women’s health nurse practitioner program that I didn’t know my own body,” Kenney said.
She struggled with symptoms of premenstrual syndrome (PMS) and, despite years of schooling, did not realize it was PMS.
“We literally do not get a foundation of how our bodies work, especially in connection to the menstrual cycle and our hormones.”
Faced with her own lack of knowledge and ignorance of her own body, the pieces finally fell into place when she was under the preceptorship of a physician trained in fertility awareness-based methods (FABMs). Equipped with a deeper understanding of the menstrual cycle, Kenney was convinced this was how she wanted to practice medicine and better serve women with a restorative approach. Now in practice at Sancta Familia Medical, she utilizes a cooperative approach that does not rely on suppressive medications like oral contraceptive pills, but rather focuses on root causes and a restorative reproductive approach.
Freedom and FACTS
Kenney has found enormous freedom in the knowledge that clinicians can practice medicine without synthetic hormones, offer patients healing, and equip them with an understanding of their own body. After learning about FACTS at a women’s health conference, she found common ground with the FACTS mission to educate future healthcare professionals on evidence-based FABMs in order to empower and engage patients to care for their reproductive health.
Eventually, she connected with Dr. Marguerite Duane, cofounder of FACTS, and the two began routinely discussing patient cases and available restorative interventions. These initial conversations ultimately became the foundation for the elective case studies. Kenney now regularly joins an incredible lineup of case study facilitators, including physicians, clinicians, and educators, who engage students in discussions about real patient cases and the protocols available for various treatments, from infertility to endometriosis.
“It is so inspiring to be working with students, giving them information that is just not taught to them in medical schools,” Kenney remarked. “It feels like you’re at the ground roots of something that someday will hopefully be a part of the traditional curriculum.”
“It is so inspiring to be working with students, giving them information that is just not taught to them in medical schools.”
Kenney is also grateful for the collaborative format of case studies, which affords her the opportunity to further her own education. She often learns something new from her fellow facilitators and the cases they present.
Migraine Headaches and the Menstrual Cycle: A Sneak Peek
Kenney will continue to share her expertise at the upcoming conference, Revitalizing Women’s Healthcare, co-hosted by FACTS and the Institute of Restorative Reproductive Medicine of America (IRRMA). Join us in-person in Minneapolis, MN on September 29-30, 2023, to learn more from Kenney about migraine headaches, which are three times more common in women than men. She hopes to help clinicians who feel unequipped to treat migraines beyond traditional medications by offering them information to assess the condition from a hormonal perspective through a restorative approach.
Spreading the Word
When asked what FACTS resource she would have most benefited from during her early education in nursing school, Kenney wishes she had been exposed to the webinars that FACTS now offers on a monthly basis for a variety of audiences — from teenage girls to medical and nursing students to men and women interested in learning more. With content available for every audience and knowledge level, these webinars provide nursing students, among others, an introduction to a method of restorative medicine that has shaped the paths of hundreds of future healthcare professionals. She believes these basics about fertility awareness should be a standard part of every curriculum.
“Every man and woman should understand their body at this level because this allows us to be empowered to take charge of our health,” Kenney said.
This passion to educate both future healthcare professionals and young men and women who want to better understand their bodies prompted Kenney to launch a podcast in 2020 called The Hormone Genius, with her co-host Jamie Rathjen, MA, CFCP. They are about to start their fourth season and have posted over 100 episodes, including a recent one on Revitalizing Women’s Health with Dr. Duane. Kenney recognizes that the podcast has a sort of ripple effect as she has witnessed how the information that she and Rathjen share has planted seeds among students, nurses, nutritionists, and many listeners.
“We are out there to empower people with information so that they can become the genius of their own hormones,” Kenney said.
Kenney also recently published her first book, The Happy Girls Guide to Being Whole: What You Never Knew About Your Natural Body. Geared towards women ages 16 to 24, the book is everything Kenney would want to share with any young woman. It covers cycle awareness, healthy lifestyles, and even includes a smattering of case studies, which may resonate with young women experiencing symptoms ranging from polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) to PMS and equip them with the confidence to take ownership of their health in conversations with doctors.
A Bright Future Ahead
“The future is bright in women’s health because of the ability to reach more people with empowering information that allows them to be proactive about their health,” Kenney said in closing.
“The future is bright in women’s health because of the ability to reach more people with empowering information that allows them to be proactive about their health.”
Through the FACTS elective and CME course, more and more medical professionals are well-equipped to treat women with a restorative approach. Clinicians trained in FABMs can provide their patients a wider array of family planning and healthcare options and then guide them in a shared decision-making process as women and couples discern the best method for their goals.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gracie Stotzer
Gracie Stotzer first joined FACTS as the Conference and Speaker Program Coordinator in the summer of 2021 and now serves as the Educational Programs Assistant. Upon graduation from Benedictine College with dual majors in psychology and Spanish, she traded out her native Albuquerque, NM for Sevilla, Spain to become an ESL instructor. While abroad, she began a crash course in fertility awareness to address her own health issues. Upon returning to the United States, she encountered FACTS and is delighted to now engage with students and FACTS speakers alike–including some of the very same doctors who saw her as a patient while abroad. Gracie now balances her FACTS responsibilities with graduate studies in human nutrition, fostering a growing interest in the intersection of the health of both people and the planet. Unsurprisingly, in her spare time, you can find her enjoying great food and the great outdoors!
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