Western Kentucky is one of the many rural areas around the country where a lack of resources prevents residents from receiving proper, full-scope medical care. Frontier Nursing University (FNU) graduate Linda Pierce, MSN, APRN, FNP-BC is looking to change that.
Inspired by FNU’s mission and her own personal calling, Linda is helping bring the first-ever Remote Area Medical (RAM) clinic to Madisonville, Ky. in September 2019.
Remote Area Medical (RAM) is a major nonprofit provider of free mobile clinics with a mission to prevent pain and alleviate suffering by providing free, quality healthcare to those in need. For rural western Kentuckians, these healthcare services can be life-changing.
Many participants in the RAM clinics are not able to afford medical insurance, or do not receive every facet of medical care they need with their healthcare packages. Basic dentistry, optometry and mental health care are often neglected in these situations. Linda believes in treating the whole patient, which is what RAM will provide.
With an education in Family Nursing Practice (FNP Class 103), Linda has always had a passion for helping others. In 2016, she became the first provider for the Fast Pace Urgent Care in Madisonville, offering primary care along with urgent care to all ages.
But after attending two RAM clinics in Tennessee, she began to see a greater need. She noticed how many attendees waited overnight in their cars for the clinic to begin the next morning, just so they could receive the care they desperately needed.
Conversations with fellow volunteers and coordinators began to get Linda’s wheels turning about how to bring a RAM clinic to rural western Kentucky.
“There’s a need here in Kentucky,” she said. “I’ve always had a vision to do medical missions. I’ve always wanted to take care of people who couldn’t take care of themselves, and now I have the avenue.”
Linda would have to jump through some hoops to get the first-ever western Kentucky RAM event started: Finding in-state volunteers, securing a location, and coordinating with RAM staff to organize the event at a high level.
She asked God to help her figure out where to have it, and it became clear that her church building would make a perfect first-year locale. Her pastor agreed to help her, and the location was approved by RAM officials early in 2019.
“Everything sort of started falling into place,” Linda said.
The two-day RAM event in Madisonville, Ky. will be held on September 14-15, 2019 at Grace Warehouse Church. This event is free and open to the public, with parking opening at 12 a.m. and clinic doors opening at 6 a.m.
With the location in place and a date secured, the next several months will focus on finding volunteers.
Those who specialize in dentistry, dental hygiene, optometry, pharmacy, podiatry and psychiatry are needed. Medical students are also encouraged to volunteer.
Even laypeople with no medical experience can get involved. Security, parking, greeting, ticket distribution, and walking patients from one station to another are just a few of the ways community members help RAM events run smoothly. It’s also a perfect opportunity for those who need to log community service hours.
Linda has called on the Madisonville community to get involved in this life-changing event. She has had great response from local churches, the county jail’s culinary school, local officials and several individuals willing to sponsor hotel rooms for the RAM core volunteers. Beginning with this newspaper article and with an upcoming meeting with the mayor of Madisonville and spots on local radio scheduled, Linda is passionate about getting even more volunteers from the community to join in.
“Our vision is to help as many people as we can,” she said. The more volunteers that sign up, the larger the scope and breadth of care the RAM clinic can offer.
She is already looking ahead to next year’s event, which will be held at the convention center at the fairgrounds and hopefully have an even larger capacity to serve more members of her western Kentucky area.
Linda credits FNU with driving her passion for helping others. “FNU focuses on the rural setting so much, not just what its graduates can do for themselves in a big-city, high-pay setting,” she said. “Frontier taught me to go to where people can’t get to you and just help however you can.”
As an active member of its Alumni Association Advisory Council, Linda is also enrolled in the Psychiatric-Mental Health Nurse Practitioner post-graduate program, set to begin in spring 2020. Her aim is to offer mental health care to her primary care patients, treating them as holistically as possible.
Linda’s husband of 38 years, Larry, and their four children and seven grandchildren are her ultimate support system.
“I’m humbled every day to be able to use my skills to give back,” she said.
If you would like to volunteer at a RAM event, please visit RAMUSA.org/Volunteer-With-Us/. For Madisonville event volunteers: Click the “Register to Volunteer Here” button, fill out your information and select “Madisonville, KY 2019” in the Events section.
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).