Behavioral health services

For adults, teens and children

Behavioral health is an encompassing term that describes the connection between behavior and the well-being of an individual’s body, mind and spirit. Given the tools to change behavior, thinking patterns and coping mechanisms, people can work toward improving their physical and mental health.

The Ko-Kwel Wellness Center offers a variety of services to help strengthen your mental and emotional well-being. Our diversified team of professionals can help with a wide range of issues.

Appointments often can be scheduled for the same day as your visit to your primary care provider. Ask how a behavioral health professional can be part of your individual wellness team.


Meet our professionals

Gina Allison, LPC

Mental health counselor Gina Allison is available in Coos Bay for individuals, couples and families. She offers support and collaboration for clients of all ages with:

  • Adjustments to changes
  • Problem solving skills
  • Building coping skills
  • Emotional regulation
  • Depression and anxiety
  • Trauma and stress difficulties
  • Tobacco and alcohol
  • Sleep problems

Kenda Plate, LPC

As a licensed professional counselor, Kenda M. Plate serves as your behavioral health consultant. She is skilled in reducing intrusive mental health problems and empowers clients to build coping skills.

Kenda has focused her practice on high-risk and underserved populations in rural communities. She previously worked in the Klamath Tribal Health and Family Services agency in Klamath Falls.

She is certified in mindfulness-based stress reduction and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing.

Kenda can help with difficult life problems, eating and activity changes for a healthy weight, behavioral changes for tobacco or alcohol use, and a variety of mental health problems.


Jennifer Hope, PMHNP-BC

While training to become a nurse practitioner in 2006, Jennifer Hope developed a close friendship with a Cherokee Indian nurse practitioner in rural West Virginia. Working in a tribal clinic has been one of her goals ever since.

A coal miner’s daughter, Jennifer has a Master of Science in nursing from West Virginia University in Charleston. She became a psychiatric nurse practitioner in 2021, when she earned a post-graduate certificate from Virginia’s Shenandoah University.

Jennifer spends most of her time at Coast Community Health Center in Bandon and Port Orford, Ore. At KWC, she manages mental health medication for patients of all ages. She also provides medication-assisted treatment to those who are challenged with alcohol and substance abuse.

Kim Codding, LCSW

Kim is the lead mental health therapist at the Ko-Kwel Wellness Center in Coos Bay.

Kim will be offering support services for issues such as trauma-informed care, depression, anxiety, aging, substance abuse, chronic mental illness, couple counseling and other mental health concerns.

Kim has lived in Bandon for more than six years after moving to Oregon from Bozeman, Montana. She enjoys spending time outdoors camping and beach combing with her husband, Tim, and her dog named Kali.

Kim says she is good at respecting boundaries to create a safe environment where all can flourish in. She is most looking forward to meeting people in the community and forming supportive relationships in her new role within the Tribe.