The meaning to my life is to help other people find the meaning to theirs. I’m excited I can finally answer my grandma’s question, “What’s new on the old frontier?”
Justine Uhlenbrock, RN, BSN, MPH
In 2005, after 10 years as a summer camp counselor, I loved working with kids but was frustrated with how the health system failed them. I swam upstream to where policies were being made, trained to be a public health professional in Washington, DC, and learned how to use evidence to make informed healthcare decisions. I read Richard Louv’s book, Last Child in the Woods, and I filed his story away in my heart, not knowing how I could help solve the problem of a generation of children being raised indoors.
Then when my daughters were born, I saw how often we have replaced mindful support with beeping machines, to the detriment of maternal outcomes. I became a birth doula and childbirth educator because I believe in the ordinary yet also profoundly extraordinary power of women’s bodies to grow and birth babies, with love and occasionally a few, well-timed medical interventions. I became a nurse to empower people to heal and prevent illness, and I trained as a sexuality educator to share the news about how truly amazing our bodies really are. Now I am a mother of two tweens, and I have uniquely relevant content expertise and inside knowledge of these problems we face. I am also capable and committed to solving them, together. Get outside with us.
What I Do
Registered Nurse
Camp Counselor
Birth Doula
Childbirth & Sexuality Educator
Experiences
School & Camp Nurse
(2018 – Present)
I attended Northeastern University to become a licensed RN and have been a school nurse in Massachusetts and Georgia and a camp nurse at Wyonegonic Camps in Maine.
Public Health Professional
(2007 – Present)
I have a MPH from George Washington University in Community-Oriented Primary Care, which is focused on building up communities’ resilience based on their inner assets, rather than their externally-determined gaps. I trained and certified as a birth doula through Doulas of North America (DONA) in 2012 and as a childbirth educator through the Childbirth and Postpartum Professional Association in 2013. I trained as a sexuality education facilitator through Our Whole Lives (OWL) in 2017 and 2018.
Camp Counselor
(1995 – 2014)
I worked as a camp counselor every summer from when I was 15 to 25, then took some years off to become a working stiff, and I have come back as often as I can to work at camp while my kids are attending.
Wanderbird 