Contributed by Caryl Carpenter, November 2022. Norma, Tenn. is one of the original three communities that came together to form Mountain People’s Health Councils (MPHC). Norma is in the southern part of Scott County, Tenn., a county that was once one of the leading coal producers in the state. Norma was at one time a …
James Lovett first encountered the Student Health Coalition as a young patient at the 1970 or 1971 health fair in Norma, Tenn. In this clip of an interview with Caryl Carpenter and Rick Davidson, learn directly from Lovett about his personal and professional development that led to later becoming the CEO of Mountain People’s Health …
After graduating from the University of Akron with a Bachelor’s of Science in Nursing, I began my nursing career setting up and running health fairs with a team of community representatives and health professionals in eastern, rural North Carolina. I enjoyed this work and felt my calling might be to work with folks with limited …
Sharon Roberson attended Vanderbilt University from 1974 to 1978, an era during which the campus was still adjusting to racial integration that had begun less than a decade earlier. Stories she shares during a 2018 interview shed light on her experiences as a Black student leader in a mostly-White college community. In the summer of …
I’m a native of Blount County in the Smoky Mountain region of East Tennessee. I grew up loving the mountains of East Tennessee and Western North Carolina. I began my college career as a forestry major with the idea of becoming a ranger for the National Park Service. However, after attending three other colleges, I …
Art Van Zee, during his Internal Medicine Residency at Vanderbilt, served as a mentor for Coalition students in 1974 and 1975 when the health fairs were active in St. Charles and other southwest Virginia sites. He was very taken by the community and so many of the local clinic’s founders that he returned to St. …
