SUPERPOWER: Connecting community partners
Director, Division of Community Health at Marshall University Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine
Improving the health and well-being of West Virginia has been a true calling for Deborah Koester. She grew up in Illinois and went to school at Purdue University, where she was among the first graduates of the Doctor of Nursing Practice program.
During her education, Koester became interested in population health improvement. In her dissertation, she used a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) assessment tool to study the work of community partners. “How groups work together in community health, that’s a sweet spot for me. I lead from behind, so I enjoy helping communities do the work they need to do, because they know their people the best.”
She traveled across the country for the CDC for a number of years to support the improvement of health outcomes. Along her journey, she also earned her Ph.D. in public health. Koester and her husband moved to West Virginia for his career, and once they settled in, they never once considered leaving. She now uses her expertise as an assistant professor and director of the Division of Community Health at Marshall University’s Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine. There, she and her staff have worked to support community coalition-building for diabetes and chronic disease through technical assistance and education to more than 70 community-based coalitions across eight states in Appalachia; develop a sustainable, copyrighted community health worker (CHW) model to integrate CHWs into health care system chronic care management teams in three states; provide technical assistance for expanded school mental health programs across the state; lead coordination of the State Substance Use Response Plan; and provide public and population health data analytics and evaluation services.
Koester has the opportunity to mentor students in their research projects. Her work also entails coordinating projects for the West Virginia Partnership for Health Improvement. She says she draws inspiration from seeing what different groups of people are able to accomplish when working together.
“I’ve worked in every county in this state,” Koester says. “Every project we do, we have created some level of new knowledge or something for others to build upon. It’s about people coming together, and people in West Virginia truly work together.” In addition to her community health and academic work, she and her husband are enjoying their roles as grandparents.
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