The 2018 Couriers served a vast number of Appalachian community members through their summer of working in clinics and nonprofits. We are pleased to share with you a glimpse of their summer projects and service below:
Molly Craig
Molly serves as a “runner” at the RAM event
Molly Craig served with Kentucky Mountain Health Alliance (Little Flower Clinic) and Bluegrass Care Navigators. For her community project, she worked with a local practitioner to conduct a seminar on combating opioid addiction for inmates at the Leslie County Detention Center, where over 85 percent of the inmates are incarcerated due to drug-related charges.
Molly donated the remainder of her project stipend to Little Flower Clinic’s in-house transportation program. With Molly’s donation, Little Flower Clinic will build benches for the patients to sit while they wait to be picked up for their health appointments. We thank Molly for her dedication and service this year, and wish her luck on her quest to become a physician!
James Rasmussen
James with the FNS historic landmark sign
James Rasmussen served with Mary Breckinridge ARH Hospital and Red Bird Mission. With Red Bird, James performed bone density screenings at a wellness fair at Red Bird Christian School. He also collaborated with local community members and officials to design and implement a large-scale mural celebrating the spirit and culture of Hyden. Volunteers helped design and paint the mural over the course of a weekend.
The completed mural will remain behind Hyden Citizens Bank as a part of the Hyden community. We wish James the best in medical school, and we thank him for his service!
Dania Cervantes Ayala
Dania serves at The Well
Dania Cervantes Ayala served with Hometown Clinic and Bluegrass Care Navigators. She provided end-of-life hospice services, shadowed advanced practice registered nurses and learned about rural healthcare in various settings.
For her community project, Dania handed out backpacks with hygiene, wellness and other often-overlooked items to students at a local back-to-school event. She procured the items by soliciting for financial and in-kind support from the community. We thank Dania for her service and wish her the best of luck as she begins her Baccalaureate Nursing Program!
Courier Volunteer Opportunities
All three Couriers also took other opportunities to volunteer throughout the summer. They each served at a local coffee shop called The Well. Run solely by volunteers, proceeds from The Well are donated toward the local food pantry.
In addition, Couriers participated in the Health Wagon Remote Area Medical (RAM) events in both Hazard, Ky. and Wise, Va. The Health Wagon’s mobile medical clinic delivers free, high-quality vision, dental and medical services to children, individuals, and families who do not have access or cannot afford to visit a healthcare provider.
The Wise RAM event registered 1,349 patients and provided $413,171 in services. In its inaugural year, the Hazard RAM event registered 446 patients and provided $131,951 in services.
We thank RAM for their support of Appalachian communities all over the nation, and our Couriers for their willingness to be a part of such a vital project! Thank you to our Couriers and Community Partners, as well as our sponsors and supporters.
A special thanks also goes to Breckinridge Capital Advisors for covering the program fees for this year’s Couriers, all of their community project costs, and their ongoing advocacy for our internship program. Together we are all serving Appalachia!
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- Couriers in Dental Assistant Uniforms at RAM event
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- Dania Cervantes Ayala assists with dental care at RAM event
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- James Rasmussen and Molly Craig organize shoes for the RAM event
Carrie Belin is an experienced board-certified Family Nurse Practitioner and a graduate of the Johns Hopkins DNP program, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Georgetown University School of Nursing, and Johns Hopkins School of Nursing. She has also completed fellowships at Georgetown and the University of California Irvine.
Angie has been a full-scope midwife since 2009. She has experience in various birth settings including home, hospital, and birth centers. She is committed to integrating the midwifery model of care in the US. She completed her master’s degree in nurse-midwifery at Frontier Nursing University (FNU) and her Doctorate at Johns Hopkins University. She currently serves as the midwifery clinical faculty at FNU. Angie is motivated by the desire to improve the quality of healthcare and has led quality improvement projects on skin-to-skin implementation, labor induction, and improving transfer of care practices between hospital and community midwives. In 2017, she created a short film on skin-to-skin called 
Justin C. Daily, BSN, RN, has ten years of experience in nursing. At the start of his nursing career, Justin worked as a floor nurse on the oncology floor at St. Francis. He then spent two years as the Director of Nursing in a small rural Kansas hospital before returning to St. Francis and the oncology unit. He has been in his current position as the Chemo Nurse Educator for the past four years. He earned an Associate in Nurse from Hutchinson Community College and a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Bethel College.
Brandy Jackson serves as the Director of Undergraduate Nursing Programs and Assistant Educator at Wichita State University and Co-Director of Access in Nursing. Brandy is a seasoned educator with over 15 years of experience. Before entering academia, Brandy served in Hospital-based leadership and Critical Care Staff nurse roles. Brandy is passionate about equity in nursing education with a focus on individuals with disabilities. Her current research interests include accommodations of nursing students with disabilities in clinical learning environments and breaking down barriers for historically unrepresented individuals to enter the nursing profession. Brandy is also actively engaged in Interprofessional Education development, creating IPE opportunities for faculty and students at Wichita State. Brandy is an active member of Wichita Women for Good and Soroptimist, with the goal to empower women and girls. Brandy is a TeamSTEPPS master trainer. She received the DASIY Award for Extraordinary Nursing Faculty in 2019 at Wichita State University. 
Dr. Sabrina Ali Jamal-Eddine is an Arab-disabled queer woman of color with a PhD in Nursing and an interdisciplinary certificate in Disability Ethics from the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). Dr. Jamal-Eddine’s doctoral research explored spoken word poetry as a form of critical narrative pedagogy to educate nursing students about disability, ableism, and disability justice. Dr. Jamal-Eddine now serves as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in UIC’s Department of Disability and Human Development and serves on the Board of Directors of the National Organization of Nurses with Disabilities (NOND). During her doctoral program, Sabrina served as a Summer Fellow at a residential National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) Summer Institute at Arizona State University (2023), a summer fellow at Andrew W. Mellon’s National Humanities Without Walls program at University of Michigan (2022), a Summer Research Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Othering & Belonging Institute (2021), and an Illinois Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and related Disabilities (LEND) trainee (2019-2020).
Vanessa Cameron works for Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nursing Education & Professional Development. She is also attending George Washington University and progressing towards a PhD in Nursing with an emphasis on ableism in nursing. After becoming disabled in April 2021, Vanessa’s worldview and perspective changed, and a recognition of the ableism present within healthcare and within the culture of nursing was apparent. She has been working since that time to provide educational foundations for nurses about disability and ableism, provide support for fellow disabled nursing colleagues, and advocate for the disabled community within healthcare settings to reduce disparities.
Dr. Lucinda Canty is a certified nurse-midwife, Associate Professor of Nursing, and Director of the Seedworks Health Equity in Nursing Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She earned a bachelor’s degree in nursing from Columbia University, a master’s degree from Yale University, specializing in nurse-midwifery, and a PhD from the University of Connecticut. Dr. Canty has provided reproductive health care for over 29 years. Her research interests include the prevention of maternal mortality and severe maternal morbidity, reducing racial and ethnic health disparities in reproductive health, promoting diversity in nursing, and eliminating racism in nursing and midwifery.
Dr. Lisa Meeks is a distinguished scholar and leader whose unwavering commitment to inclusivity and excellence has significantly influenced the landscape of health professions education and accessibility. She is the founder and executive director of the DocsWithDisabilities Initiative and holds appointments as an Associate Professor in the Departments of Learning Health Sciences and Family Medicine at the University of Michigan.
Dr. Nikia Grayson, DNP, MSN, MPH, MA, CNM, FNP-C, FACNM (she/her) is a trailblazing force in reproductive justice, blending her expertise as a public health activist, anthropologist, and family nurse-midwife to champion the rights and health of underserved communities. Graduating with distinction from Howard University, Nikia holds a bachelor’s degree in communications and a master’s degree in public health. Her academic journey also led her to the University of Memphis, where she earned a master’s in medical anthropology, and the University of Tennessee, where she achieved both a master’s in nursing and a doctorate in nursing practice. Complementing her extensive education, she completed a post-master’s certificate in midwifery at Frontier Nursing University.
Dr. Tia Brown McNair is the Vice President in the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Student Success and Executive Director for the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation (TRHT) Campus Centers at the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) in Washington, DC. She oversees both funded projects and AAC&U’s continuing programs on equity, inclusive excellence, high-impact practices, and student success. McNair directs AAC&U’s Summer Institutes on High-Impact Practices and Student Success, and TRHT Campus Centers and serves as the project director for several AAC&U initiatives, including the development of a TRHT-focused campus climate toolkit. She is the lead author of From Equity Talk to Equity Walk: Expanding Practitioner Knowledge for Racial Justice in Higher Education (January 2020) and Becoming a Student-Ready College: A New Culture of Leadership for Student Success (July 2016 and August 2022 Second edition).