The CommonHealth of Kentucky
A 13-part KET production aimed at improving the health of all Kentuckians by sharing health and wellness projects from across the state that are succeeding in making their communities healthier.
Be Well Kentucky
a project of KET’s Be Well Kentucky initiative
The CommonHealth of Kentucky is a 2005 KET production. Produced in partnership with the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Host Wayne Tuckson | Gilbert Friedell | Elizabeth Holcomb | Rallie McAllister | Larry Palmer
“Leadership in a community is vitally important.”
Elizabeth “Betty” Powell Holcomb sees the needs of communities every day in the faces of her patients and students. It is this interaction with people—whether in her office, in a classroom, or in the community—that fuels her deep interest in health care, particularly in rural areas.
A nurse practitioner and professor of nursing at Murray State University, Holcomb specializes in rural health and international health care systems. She has worked in labor and delivery, nursery, the neonatal intensive care unit, home health, and flight nursery. She is also a teacher, having taught at the Barnes Hospital School of Nursing, Marquette University, and St. Joseph’s College.
Holcomb has received numerous honors, including recognition as Nurse Practitioner of the Year from the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners, which cited her work in seeking rural sites for students to work, thereby enhancing the number of providers willing to practice in isolated, underserved areas. The academy also honored Holcomb for her leadership at Murray State, noting that 100 percent of MSU’s family nurse practitioners have passed the national certification exam.
She is a member of the Kentucky Rural Health Association, the Kentucky Coalition of Nurse Practitioners and Nurse Midwives, and Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing.
Host Wayne Tuckson | Gilbert Friedell | Elizabeth Holcomb | Rallie McAllister | Larry Palmer