A year after the storm, the WNC Health Policy Initiative, in partnership with the NC Center for Health and Wellness, has launched a study to explore how health system leaders navigated the challenges of Hurricane Helene: what worked, what didn’t, and what must change to strengthen our regional response in future crises. Through interviews and qualitative research, the team is gathering critical insights to shape smarter, more resilient practices for health organizations, communities, and governments across WNC. In this episode, our research team shares how this study was developed, why it matters, and what they hope to achieve.

The Western North Carolina Health Policy Initiative (HPI) has launched a new podcast series that takes a deep dive into a new WNC HPI research project exploring what we can learn about our region’s healthcare response in the days and weeks following Hurricane Helene’s devastating landfall across Western North Carolina on the evening of Sept 27, 2024.

This project is one of 21 Helene-focused research efforts supported by the North Carolina Collaboratory, and is driven by team members from across the North Carolina Center for Health & Wellness (NCCHW) and UNC Asheville’s Health Sciences department who are working to capture this critical piece of our region’s recent history.

North Carolina, like the rest of the United States, is facing a massive healthcare workforce shortage. With the state in need of nurses, caregivers, behavioral health specialists, physicians, and public health workers, a number of initiatives across the state are seeking to increase our healthcare workforce. 

While some collaborations are looking big picture…in WNC…other initiatives are exposing students to the healthcare field and are building pathways for those students to enter that workforce. One program led by the North Carolina Center for Health & Wellness (NCCHW), Mountain Area Health Education Center (MAHEC), and the Dogwood Health Trust, in partnership with a number of universities in that region, have connected students to the critical field of healthcare with the Student Health Ambassador (SHA) program.

Emma Olson, Associate Director of the NC Center for Health and Wellness (NCCHW), presented a short film depicting the impact and experiences of community health workers (CHWs) across Western North Carolina as a Lightning Talk at The Imagining America 2023 National Gathering: Radical Reckoning – Invoking the Elements for Collective Change.