Associate Vice President for Rural Health  

UHA Administration 
Hilda Heady
(304) 293-6753 

Hilda R. Heady has a passion for working with and for people who have little or no voice in social and health care policy. She is from a small rural community and part of a large caring family with strong southern Appalachian values. She is the current President and former Secretary of the Board of Trustees of the National Rural Health Association. She has served as a board member of the Community-Campus Partnerships for Health, and various other national and state task forces and committees addressing health, rural health, rural women’s health, rural veterans, community-academic partnerships, and rural economic development issues. Ms. Heady has provided congressional testimony on rural aging, rural safety net providers, medical liability reform, and rural veterans.

She has been involved in rural health issues and community development for 36 years following her service as a VISTA volunteer. She has served in a leadership role in rural health care reform, policy development, technical assistance, and coordination of statewide resources for rural health.

She is Associate Vice-President for Rural Health at the Robert C. Byrd Health Sciences Center of West Virginia University. She is jointly appointed to the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission and works with the Vice Chancellor for Health Sciences. She serves as the Executive Director of the West Virginia Rural Health Education Partnerships, a program which has received national acclaim in such publications as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Journal of Rural Health, and many other professional journals. an interdisciplinary, rural health training program covering 50 of West Virginia's most under served counties. She was an invited participant to the "Health Care Reform in Rural Areas" White House conference in 1993 and a regional finalist for the 1997 White House Fellows program.

Heady served as the CEO of a small, rural 58-bed hospital, Preston Memorial Hospital, and provided the needed leadership to turn around this near bankrupt rural hospital by working with the community and leaders to restructure its mission and the debt of the hospital. Modern Healthcare published a brief news piece on this turnaround in their October 21, 1989 issue. She also established an alternative birth center, hired the county’s first OB-GYN and certified nurse midwife, organized a women’s health center and improved obstetric services in this county prior to her role as CEO. In 1984, she toured England and Germany presenting to women’s groups about the birth center concept in the United States. Both these efforts were achieved by organizing a partnership of rural people who engaged in community education, fund raising, policy development, and advocacy. These partnerships facilitated changes in the health care delivery system of this very rural area. Her personal and professional interest areas also include partnerships for community based health professions training, spirituality and social change, rural health care systems innovation and rural veterans and their families

Ms. Heady holds a Masters degree in Social Work from West Virginia University. She is the recipient of numerous awards including: the national leadership award for partnership building by the Community-Campus Partnerships for Health in 2001, the Governor’s Award for Outstanding Achievement in Rural Health in 1996, the 1992 Exemplar Award by the West Virginia Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, the Award of Achievement by the West Virginia Hospital Association in 1991, and the American College of Healthcare Executives Regents Award in 1991. She also received the Susan B. Anthony Award for the state chapter of NOW in 1990, was selected as "Woman of the Year" by the Preston County News in 1982, and "Woman of the Year" by the Dominion-Post, (Morgantown) in 1983.