Janie Hiserote talks about the dynamics between practitioners and the boards of the community clinics. She speaks candidly about the disagreements she had with community leader Byrd Duncan, which ultimately led to her resignation. Full footage of the interview with Janie Hiserote, Kaye Bultemeier, and Chuck Darling from October 25, 2017.
Sally Kimberly describes what became an essential element to her and other nurses’ weekly routines while working in Scott County: self-directed educational sessions committed to their professional development. She explains that these weekly meetings were both a professional and social support system and encourages all rural health centers to include such get-togethers into their fold of core functions. Full footage of …
Sally Kimberly on the professional development of nurses with MPHC Read More »
Sally Kimberly discusses the challenges of collaborating with community boards on the frontier of a practice largely unfamiliar in Appalachia at the time—community-driven, rural healthcare. Unique to her and other nurse practitioners’ experience was a widespread misunderstanding about their role. Reminiscing about these hurdles, Sally shares what it was like to be a pioneer in the field. She concludes with a commentary on the importance of education in the work …
Bill Dow co-founded the Student Health Coalition while in medical school at Vanderbilt University, in 1969. His larger-than-life role in the SHC origin story and beyond warrants special telling, which we attempt in the essay that follows. Contributed by Margaret Ecker, compiled in collaboration with friends Bill Dow energized a generation of student activists and …
Ann participated in the Coalition in 1970, the first summer that the Coalition conducted multiple health fairs in middle and eastern Tennessee. She had just graduated from Vanderbilt School of Nursing. Ann was instrumental in the establishment of structured followup care for clinical issues discovered at the Health Fairs. She helped devise systematic home visits …
Contributed by Cathy Barrow Heck I was absolutely sold on the Appalachian Student Health Coalition upon seeing the video as a nursing student in the fall of 1973. The idea of a team of students working in partnership with rural communities to accomplish something truly transformational was irresistible to me. If I remember correctly, I …
Contributed by John E. Davis, August 2015. I am the eldest son of a Southern couple who moved north for employment after World War II. Every June, my parents would “go home,” loading their three boys into a station wagon with no air conditioning and traveling hundreds of miles down US 1 from New Jersey …
Contributed by John Emmeus Davis, 2015. Marie Cirillo was born in Brooklyn in 1929. Her father had emigrated from rural Italy. Her mother had grown up in a small Catholic community in central Kentucky. Every summer, her mother returned to her home town, taking Marie and her three sisters for a long stay with their …
