Carolina Alumni Review - January/February 2007

Some young alumni make certain they have no gaps in coverage after they leave Carolina. Phillip Scott ’03, for instance, bought an individual policy that would take effect immediately after graduation. “I have a history of some pretty extensive medical conditions,” Scott says. “I knew the importance of being covered.” He found a job right away on a newspaper, but it didn’t offer benefits, and he continued paying for his own coverage until he started a marketing job in New Jersey in July. “I know from a few years’ experience that health insurance is not cheap to pay for myself. Having an employer do that not only saves me money but takes a burden off my back.”

Wiley, still self-employed and traveling extensively to perform his six plays all over the country, now buys a high-deductible policy that’s attached to a health savings account. “I can put money in and the IRS can’t touch that,” he says. “My wife would kill me if I didn’t have insurance.”

— Kathleen Kearns

A Strategy for Health

“You can’t be a productive professional unless you’re a healthy human being,” points out Devetta Holman Nash ’ 79, associate director for Counseling and Wellness Services at UNC. After graduation, young alumni often take full responsibility for the first time for their health coverage and health decisions. “There are not as many safety nets as there have been when you were at home or at university,” Nash says. Counseling and Wellness Services offers programs to help students see the long-term ramifications of present health behaviors. Nash, who received her master’s in public health from Carolina in 1985, says she hopes that alumni carry that awareness with them when they graduate. “On campus, you have a class schedule that you pre-register for a semester ahead,” she says. “Now that you have left the academic realm, the same strategy is a good tool for you to use in life. A strategy for life has to be, first and foremost, a game plan for how you’re going to proceed for health and wellness — physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.”