School of Nursing Faculty and Students Practice Cura Communitas in West Virginia Appalachian Community
Top Image: Students and faculty in the Appalachian Community Engagement experiential learning course painted murals in a community space in Clay County, West Virginia, a project commissioned by Georgetown in partnership with the Clay County Health Department.
(June 13, 2025) — Six School of Nursing graduate students traveled to rural West Virginia to learn more about the lived experience of residents in Appalachian communities, including the policies that impact the social determinants of health.
(from l) School of Nursing faculty Vera Barton-Maxwell, PhD, APRN, FNP-BC; Debora Dole, PhD, CNM, FACNM; and Melody Wilkinson, DNP, APRN, FNP-BC, FAANP, led the trip.
The trip is part of the Appalachian Community Engagement (ACE) experiential learning course and is led by three School of Nursing faculty members, one of whom, Melody Wilkinson, DNP, APRN, FNP-BC, FAANP, is a native West Virginian who has worked in the area for almost a decade, forging relationships and growing Georgetown’s presence in the community. It was made possible by funding from Gia (SFS’00) and Mark (B’00) Burton and the recently established Burton Family Endowed Nursing Experiential Fund.
“Clay County, where the students spent their time, is one of the most remote, rural, and under-resourced areas in the state of West Virginia,” said Wilkinson. “Fifty percent of the children in the area are in foster or kinship care, primarily due to parental substance abuse.”
A scene from Clay County, West Virginia
According to Wilkinson, many of the graduate nursing students are drawn to the course seeking a greater understanding of rural health disparities. “The students who select to go on this trip are often choosing to forfeit income in addition to paying for their travel to West Virginia out of a commitment to social injustice and improving health in communities like Clay County,” she said.
“I had never been to West Virginia before this experience,” said Nathalie Mojica (G’26), who is enrolled in the BSN-DNP and WHNP programs in the School of Nursing. “I work in an urban community health center, and I wanted to participate in the course to see what it would be like to do my job in a rural setting and adapt my skills to serve that specific community.”
Building Community Through Blue and Green Spaces
Wilkinson works directly with officials at the Clay County Health Department to plan the course based on the needs of the community. During this year’s course, held April 27 to May 2, students helped build green spaces, played bingo at a senior center, provided free health screenings at a community health clinic, and shopped for groceries for local families.
The trip offered the opportunity to see firsthand the complex challenges facing rural communities.
During the course, the group wore their Georgetown T-shirts and sweatshirts to let members of the tight-knit community know that they were there to help. “It was a little strange at first, wearing Georgetown gear in what felt like a small town, but it actually made things easier because people became used to us being there and would stop and ask us what we were doing in the community that day,” said Mojica.
Last year, a group of School of Nursing faculty received a RADIANCE grant from Georgetown to partner with the local high school to develop a blue and green space, with the goal of promoting wellness and researching its impact.
“We worked with the community in figuring out a sustainable, ongoing project for Georgetown to implement,” said Wilkinson. “It was actually at the request of the high school students, who came forward and said they wanted a blue and green space to exist where this barren concrete pad sat between two buildings, that allowed us to pursue the project.”
Students and faculty helped build a blue and green space at the high school and landscaped the area with native plants.
Students and faculty helped build the blue and green space and landscaped the area with native plants. Clay County High School students also contributed to the project in a variety of ways, including creating benches in shop class and helping landscape the area.
To understand the impact of the new space on the high school students’ overall wellness, Georgetown faculty members will conduct a study using PhotoVoice, a participatory action research method. They’ll meet with students in multiple sessions over the coming months to capture their responses to the space.
“The high school students were so impressive and insightful about the needs of their community,” said Wilkinson. Several of the graduate nursing students from Georgetown echoed Wilkinson’s thoughts. “The students were really inspiring, and you can tell the community is really pouring into their youth,” said Shellby Bowman (G’26), a student in the Family Nurse Practitioner program.
The finished blue and green space
The nursing students also led a heart health education session and exercise tutorial complete with chair yoga at the Clay County senior center before joining residents in a game of bingo. The county health department also put the skills of the nursing students to work at a community health clinic, where they drew routine labs, administered HIV tests and checked vitals, including blood pressure screenings.
Surviving on SNAP
The activity that may have made the biggest impact on the nursing students was grocery shopping for families using their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits.
The local grocery store operates as part of a gas station.
“We shopped for a family of seven, a grandmother raising her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, who had an allotted benefit of $51 a day for all of their meals,” said Bowman.
Bowman shopped for the family at their local grocery store, which she described as a gas station with very limited options for fresh produce. “There was one banana left, and someone had just purchased the last available carton of eggs, and there wasn’t much else left on the shelf in terms of fresh ingredients,” said Bowman. “It’s very difficult to shop for three meals a day for a family of seven on that amount of money to begin with, but then you are trying to purchase things that are not as high in sodium to eat healthier, and it’s just very difficult to do.”
Shopping for families using SNAP benefits
“The graduate nursing students were deeply moved by engaging with the families through grocery shopping and really experiencing how families live in the area,” said Wilkinson. “We talk about statistics and health inequities, but those frameworks don’t tell the full story.”
After grocery shopping, nursing students delivered the groceries to families at their homes.
“The family we shopped for was so gracious,” said Mojica. “They invited us to have dinner with them, which was so generous.”
Contemplation in Action
Every evening after dinner, faculty and students convened for nightly reflections, processing their experiences and how they will shape their future practice.
After leading a health education session and exercise tutorial, the students played bingo at the senior center.
“I kept coming back to what Professor [Debora] Dole asked us throughout the trip: ‘What does help look like?’” said Mojica. “As a provider, it’s hard to wrap your mind around that the biggest impact on a person’s health may not be what happens in the clinic but instead may be having that person outside, helping build a garden.”
“The trip really opened my perspective in being able to personally connect with a person in order to see where they are coming from,” said April Pulver (G’25), a student in the NM/WHNP Program. “In the future, I could be having a conversation with someone about eating healthier, but now, I am going to be thinking through what are the circumstances and environment surrounding the patient. That’s cura personalis — caring for the whole person, seeing everything around them.”
Heather Wilpone-Welborn
GUMC Communications