Medical Insurance:Rachel Kuykendall Helps Hospital Plan for Catastrophic Events

Rachel Kuykendall spends many of her hours thinking about what could go wrong. It’s not that she’s an inveterate pessimist. On the contrary, her disposition is one of the sunniest and most positive imaginable, despite life challenges that might send many off a cliff.

Her workday at Intermountain Health St. George Regional Hospital requires the anticipation of events that could potentially disrupt hospital operations and patient care, such as natural disasters, power failures, and mass casualties. As the emergency management and business continuity coordinator for the facility, Rachel has to think big. She applies her expertise within a highly skilled team of emergency preparedness professionals who support readiness across the Intermountain Health system. She also brings a decade of experience implementing humanitarian response programs in Syria, Palestine, Jordan, and Türkiye, grounding her work in a deep understanding of crisis coordination and resilience.

“I’m not an earthquake expert or an infectious diseases expert,” noted Rachel, who joined the team in October 2025. “But a lot of it is just knowing the key actors and resources we have as a hospital system and being able to connect all of the dots when needed. And it’s making sure that our staff has the training—the ‘muscle memory’—to respond when an emergency arises.”

“Rachel hit the ground running, and she was able to contribute right away,” said Steve Rossberg, emergency management and business continuity manager and Rachel’s boss. “She has some great background; now it’s all about translating that into the hospital environment. We do so many things to keep health care accessible and available for everyone. Emergency management is a good portion of that.”

It’s fitting that Rachel’s role has brought her to a health care environment. Born and raised in Fairfax County, Virginia, her earliest caregiver influences were her mother, who spent decades as a NICU nurse; her physical therapist and nurse anesthetist sisters; and aunts who are nurses, speech therapists, and lactation consultants.

“I admired them all and always loved learning about their jobs, but I knew I could never do that,” she said, laughing. “Still, I wanted a ‘helper’ career. So being able to marry my emergency preparedness and response background with the hospital setting was a really cool career transition for me.”

That background began soon after Rachel received her master’s degree in conflict resolution from Georgetown University, with a certificate in humanitarian emergencies and refugee studies. She was quickly hired by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in Washington, D.C., then the U.S. government’s primary body for administering foreign humanitarian and development aid and disaster relief.

Beginning as a program assistant, Rachel joined a disaster assistance response team supporting Syria. Since the United States had no diplomatic presence there at the time, she worked with partner organizations stationed in Adana, Türkiye, and Amman, Jordan. “We traveled to meet with our partners to provide support and to make sure, as program managers, that we were responsibly managing U.S. taxpayer funds,” said Rachel.

Rachel spent nearly ten years in her role, steadily rising through the ranks of the agency. She made frequent trips to Türkiye and Jordan, often logging six-month stints away from D.C. When a massive earthquake devastated much of Türkiye in 2023, Rachel was deployed alongside a team of disaster response specialists, including an elite search-and-rescue unit, to coordinate the emergency operation. Her team facilitated the establishment of a field hospital, emergency shelters, and the provision of essential food and water to displaced populations. “It was a really impactful deployment,” she recalled.

By the time USAID was dissolved last year, Rachel was a resident of St. George, living with her wife, realtor Christina Childs, who had been her high school sweetheart in Virginia. “We met at field hockey tryouts. Christina was the only one who beat me in the mile,” Rachel said, laughing again. “We immediately became best friends.”

Rachel later headed to Georgetown and Christina to the University of Utah. After college, the pair reunited in D.C. But when a friend mentioned the warmth, beauty, and active lifestyle to be enjoyed in Southern Utah, both were intrigued. One month later, St. George became their home. “We absolutely love it! We can hike, bike, ski; we have an incredible circle of friends, and we love everything about this place,” Rachel said.

For Rachel, a former basketball, field hockey, soccer, and lacrosse player, that lifestyle has had its challenges. On a deployment to Amman, she experienced severe pain in her left hip. Repeated surgeries stateside did little to resolve the agony for a decade. Then orthopedic surgeon Dr. James Wylie, based at Intermountain Health’s TOSH campus in Murray, ordered a battery of hip-to-toe imaging.

“Dr. Wylie sat me down and said, ‘The bad news is, it’s a textbook case of hip dysplasia—an improper development of the hip joint, causing the socket to be too shallow to fully cover the femoral head—and both of your femurs have significant anteversion; they rotate inward. But the good news is, I can easily fix both at the same time.’ So I was like, ‘Sign me up!’”

In November 2024, Rachel underwent a femoral osteotomy (severing the left femur in two, half-twisting it, and inserting a plate and locking screws) and a periacetabular osteotomy (breaking the hip in three places, then pinning it all back together). Recovery and rehab were lengthy and grueling. But despite the need to relearn to walk, the end of her beloved job, the loss of her dog, and two incidents of home flooding, Rachel never headed off the cliff. She says her marriage, community, and perpetually pragmatic outlook have seen her through the worst.

“I think we did a healthy amount of wallowing,” she acknowledged. “But at some point, you have to get up, feed the dogs, go to the grocery store, and just keep going. Everyone has their peaks and valleys. But we’re healthy, we’re happy, we have a great community here in St. George, and I have a wonderful job. I believe it’s going to be a very good year.”