According to a Centers for Disease Control study from 2011 to 2014, about 36.5 percent of adults in the United States are obese. Over one-third of the U.S. population struggles with maintaining a healthy weight and is often faced with corresponding comorbidities such as heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancer.
Dr. Stephanie Dunkle-Blatter of St. Rita’s Medical Center utilizes a cohesive, team approach to tackle the problem of obesity in Ohio.
Originally from Indiana, Dunkle-Blatter attended the University of Georgia for her undergraduate degree in microbiology. Upon graduation, Dunkle-Blatter joined Teach for America to educate seventh-graders in rural North Carolina before attending medical school at the University of Kentucky.
After completing her general surgery residency at Kentucky, Dunkle-Blatter went on to complete a fellowship in minimally invasive surgery at Geisinger Medical Center. This was her first experience with bariatric surgery.
“I think I had some of the prejudices that a lot of people have about overweight patients, but in my fellowship, I encountered people who were just so motivated and really had tried everything to lose weight,” says Dunkle-Blatter.
“Through pretty straightforward, sometimes simple operations, we were able to help people transform their lives.” - Dr. Stephanie Dunkle-Blatter
St. Rita’s, based in Lima, offered Dunkle-Blatter an opportunity to develop a multidisciplinary weight management program.
“The two of us worked for months and months on policies creating all of the information that we would need for the program,” says Program Coordinator Joyce Bochenek.
“I really had a sense of having a balanced, multidisciplinary program,” says Dunkle-Blatter. “It was important to me to have not only a surgery program, but also a medical program so that people working towards surgery would have a way to do that, and also people who weren’t interested or qualified for surgery would have an alternative way to work toward weight loss.”
The Weight Management Program at St. Rita’s emphasizes the body, mind and spirit. To cover every aspect of the weight loss process, Dunkle-Blatter works with a tight-knit team of diverse employees.
Among those team members are physicians, nurses, dietitians, psychologists, an exercise physiologist, an insurance specialist and a chaplain.
“We have a team meeting every two weeks where our entire team assembles and we discuss new patients, and patient progress and upcoming surgeries. I think that’s really vital because we’re all on the same page and we know what’s happening with our patients,” says Bochenek.
Dunkle-Blatter cultivates this team mentality and focuses on creating lasting relationships with patients.
“She builds a community of, ‘This is a safe environment, we’re not here to judge you, if you get off track, come back and see us,’ you know? (It’s) a very safe, non-judgmental community.” - Joyce Bochenek
Dunkle-Blatter is also famed for giving out her personal card to patients to be all the more accessible, says Glory Geib, the chaplain on the weight management team.
“They just build that instant rapport, knowing that she’s honest and that she’s probably one of the first few doctors that say, ‘Your weight’s going to kill you if you don’t get it under control. You have diabetes, you have high blood pressure and we can help you out here,’” says Geib.
As part of the program, there are support groups and informational seminars to assist and educate each patient on his or her journey to a healthy lifestyle.
“We typically have 45 or 50 people show up at our practice for support group. We have different topics and different speakers every month. We really change it up,” says Bochenek. “And the neat thing about Dr. Dunkle-Blatter is that she conducts two support groups herself each year.”
“I’ve seen her do the seminars and she gives so much dignity to that whole population. It’s just awesome,” says Geib.
In seminars such as these, Dunkle-Blatter stresses long-term treatment goals for her patients.
“Ultimately, the treatment for obesity is a lifestyle change, where you’re eating a healthy diet and have an active lifestyle,” says Dunkle-Blatter. “So I always tell patients that’s our ultimate treatment goal, whether we get at that with surgery, with medications, with counseling, intragastric balloon, whatever our tool is, that’s our ultimate goal: a healthy lifestyle.”
Dunkle-Blatter exceeds the typical responsibilities of a surgeon when it comes to her patients.
She leads a bariatric yoga class catered to the overweight population, where everything is done standing or on a chair.
“She does a yoga class for her patients. How many doctors put on leotards and do yoga in front of 50 patients?” - Glory Geib.
Dunkle-Blatter’s passion for bariatric surgery is rooted in her respect for her patients and the transformation she can help make in their lives.
“It’s a very personal thing when somebody’s willing to come see you and ask for help with such a personal problem, and then they put their trust in you,” says Dunkle-Blatter. “And when you have a great outcome and they’ve changed their lives and they’re so grateful, it just really drives you to do the work. It makes it just so fun.”
Hailey Stangebye is a contributing writer. Feedback welcome at feedback@cityscenemediagroup.com.
Dr. Stephanie Dunkle-Blatter
Dr. Stephanie Dunkle-Blatter attended medical school at the University of Kentucky, where she stayed for her general surgery residency. She sought extra training in minimally invasive surgery in a fellowship at Geisinger Medical Center. She completed the fellowship in laparoscopy and bariatrics in 2006. She has been in private practice, first in Kentucky, then in Indiana, where she was involved in a bariatric center of excellence. She is now the medical director of the new St. Rita’s Weight Management program and acts as a general surgeon. Her interests include weight loss surgery, complex hernia repair, gall bladder surgery, bowel surgery including hiatal hernia repair and colon surgery and endoscopy. Dunkle-Blatter is board-certified by the American Board of Surgery and is a Fellow of the American College of Surgery.
