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This week we’re having a conversation with Hilda Heady.  Hilda has 50 years of experience as a rural health leader, direct service professional, health professions’ educator and strong advocate for rural families and rural women’s health care including childbearing services.  Hilda is also an advocate for Veterans and communities.

“We developed a plan to establish the state’s [West Virginia] first alternative in-hospital birth center.” 

Hilda Heady’s work and advocacy is focused on how best to inform policies and practices which impact rural people and the service institutions in their communities.

She served as a charter member of the VA Secretary’s Rural Health Advisory Committee from 2008 to 2013 and as the 2005 President of the National Rural Health Association. For 18 years, she was the associate vice president for rural health at the Robert C. Byrd Health Sciences Center at WVU, and for seven years the senior vice president with Atlas Research, a service disabled veteran owned small business.

Hilda is a frequent national speaker on rural culture and resilience, maternal and child health in rural areas, rural health and mental health care and issues faced by rural veterans and their families.