Angela L. Alston, MPH, Executive Director, Southeastern West Virginia Area Health Education Center
Angela Alston joins Dr. T. Ramon Stuart to talk about how public health work is changing communities across southern West Virginia. The conversation turns on a single idea, that the community is the university and the university is the community, and on what becomes possible when education and healthcare systems work the same problems together.
A native West Virginian, Angela explains how her own upbringing shaped a career spent serving rural and underserved populations. The Area Health Education Center exists to close the gap between academic medicine and what communities actually need: transportation, access to care, and the wider social conditions that decide health outcomes long before anyone reaches a clinic.
She also describes the Rural Community Health Scholars Program and the work of placing students directly into the communities they came from. Through partnerships with schools, community organizations and healthcare providers, AHEC is building a pipeline of young people equipped and motivated to practice where they grew up.
It is a practical look at how local leadership, education and community-driven solutions add up to a healthier future for southern West Virginia, and at the question this program keeps asking: why not us, and why not now?
