SUPERPOWER: Faith
Professor of Clinical Sciences, West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine
After being sick as a child and being in awe of the nurses, Jill Cochran knew she wanted to be like them: powerful, able to bring comfort and care to people. She worked as an RN for over a decade, then continued her schooling to become a nurse practitioner. Eventually, she fell in love with working in pediatrics and began working on programs to help children who were overweight or at risk for diseases. But when it came time to fund the programs she was developing, she found couldn’t get the funding because she didn’t have a doctorate. “So my kids went off to school, and I thought, ‘Well, why don’t I just run out and get a Ph.D.?” And that’s precisely what she did.
It was not without hurdles, though. “I want to talk about my failures,” she laughs. Cochran believes it’s important to speak about times when you’ve failed and about how you can overcome them, building up faith in yourself. She was held back at one point because her professors did not feel her writing was strong enough, but she used that to fuel her to become a better writer. At her last reunion with her classmates from that time, one told her, “You’re the one they said lacked writing skills, and you’ve published more than all of us.”
In addition to her numerous published papers, Cochran and her vital programs study and treat two of the most prominent causes of health problems in West Virginia children: obesity and the drug epidemic. At the root of this is her heartfelt desire to solve problems for the people in front of her—such as providing an infant’s smart bed that mimics movement in the womb for a grandmother struggling to soothe a newborn baby, as part of a study. “The bed responds to the baby, so it moved more the more movement the baby made. It’s incredible,” she explains. More important to her, though, was when the grandma said to her, “If it hadn’t been for you and this bed, I would never have been able to keep my grandbaby,” and that was most precious of all.
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Since 2014 WV Living magazine has been honoring West Virginia Wonder Women, amazing women who are raising the bar in their communities, serving as beacons of light in their industries, and forcing change for the greater good. WV Living is proud to celebrate these Appalachian mothers, millennials, and mavens proving that in a time full of uncertainty, divisiveness, and hate, love for one another is all we really need. No need for bulletproof bracelets or a golden lasso of truth—these women are creating a better West Virginia with their can-do attitudes and Mountain State spirit.
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