UVA Wise Announces New Healthy Appalachia Institute Director

UVA Wise today announced that David Driscoll, who has spearheaded similar community public health and research initiatives around the U.S., has joined the College as director of the Healthy Appalachia Institute (HAI).

Most recently, Driscoll served as associate professor of health education and the assistant dean and director of the Office of Research at the University of Virginia’s School of Medicine.

“I could not be more excited to welcome David back to Southwest Virginia. He has a proven track record of improving rural health, fostering research and partnering with faculty and the community—all the ingredients that make him perfectly suited to lead our regional public health institute,” UVA Wise Chancellor Donna P. Henry said. “He also brings his tremendous knowledge and experience as a scholar to help teach the next generation of public health professionals.”

For the past five years, he’s supported the biomedical research portfolio of the SOM, which includes roughly $150 million in National Institute of Health (NIH) funding.

In his new role, he will lead HAI’s research portfolio and identify, develop and implement population health programs collaborating with a vast number of community, business, health and education partners in the region. In the fall, Driscoll will begin teaching public health at the College.

“I see myself as part of a much larger team who is developing and attempting to implement policies and programs to improve population health in the region,” he said.

Driscoll holds a doctorate in applied anthropology with an external specialization in social marketing and a master’s degree in public health (MPH) with a concentration in epidemiology from the University of South Florida. He has a master’s degree in anthropology from Wake Forest University and a bachelor’s degree in international studies from George Mason University.

After growing up on a farm in Floyd, Va., Driscoll is excited for the opportunity to return to Southwest Virginia.

“I’ve conducted research to understand and promote population health in communities all over the country, but until now haven’t had the opportunity to do so in my own community. This was a really attractive opportunity to come back and give back to the region where I grew up,” he said.

Rural health is also passion for Driscoll. He conducted post-doctoral research with the Rural Research Program at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. He also served for nearly ten years as the director of the Institute for Circumpolar Health Studies at the University of Alaska in Anchorage, where he also taught as an associate professor of public health.

There he led an effort to bring research, investment and revenues where it hasn’t existed before—a situation much like the current one in Southwest Virginia.

To promote rural population health in Alaska, Driscoll worked closely with Alaska native people living in truly remote areas, some of which were only accessible by plane or boat. Programs included providing telemedicine for chronic diseases, injury prevention, and a healthy start mom program to ensure mothers had access to necessary social support services and infant care.

“Many of the health challenges people confronted there are similar to ones here in Appalachia—including adequate access to comprehensive public health and medical services, clean drinking water, issues with social isolation, occupations predisposed to injury, and attendant incidence of substance use disorder,” he said.

His focus is population health, defined as the health outcomes of a group of people not individuals. It’s focused on larger populations that have patterns of health determinants affecting the health of the community at large or region.

“It’s important to determine the social and environmental determinants so efforts can be more effectively focused on modifying or influencing those factors as well as the medical problems that are their symptoms,” Driscoll said.

For instance, an environmental issue could cause a health issue like cancer and individuals get treated but without determining what caused the problem the person goes back into the same unhealthy environment.

“It’s a way to promote health for the community as a whole,” he said.

A part of Driscoll’s role will be working with others to help identify those environmental and social determinants (or factors) facing Virginia’s Appalachian communities.

Reinvigorating UVA Wise’s Healthy Appalachia Institute

Formed in 2008, the Healthy Appalachia Institute’s mission is to improve health, education and prosperity of the region.

“It’s a collaboration between community and academic partners interested in providing information to support policy and health care decision making to promote population health in Appalachia,” Driscoll said.

To start, Driscoll will begin working with a host of community partners to develop a new strategic plan and the third iteration of the Institute’s regional Blueprint for Health aimed at improving health for all central Appalachians.

“The process we propose to follow is to conduct community-based discussions in which residents across Appalachia will have an opportunity to share their priorities,” said Driscoll, who hopes to have a new strategic plan by the end of the year.

HAI will also be one of the collaborators in an effort to expand the region’s access to health care funded by a $5.1 million federal grant. UVA Health and a coalition of other Southwest Virginia health care groups will work to combat health problems related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Virginia Consortium to Advance Healthcare in Appalachia will bring together HAI, the UVA Center for Telehealth, the Southwest Virginia Health Authority, the Health Wagon, Tri-Area Health and Ballad Health to help more residents get care using innovative telehealth models.

The consortium will serve the city of Norton and 10 counties—Buchanan, Carroll, Dickenson, Grayson, Lee, Russell, Scott, Smyth, Tazewell and Wise—that have severe shortages of physicians for both primary and specialty care and significantly worse health outcomes than elsewhere in Virginia.

The grant’s mission is to improve outcomes for patients with COVID-19 and chronic health conditions that have been worsened by the pandemic, along with establishing a long-term blueprint for providing care in rural communities.

“There is an urgent need for community-academic partnerships such as this one to assess and respond to health inequities in Virginia’s Appalachian communities,” said Driscoll. “Our Consortium is committed to understanding, and most importantly, modifying the determinants of population health disparities in Appalachia, including adequate access to comprehensive public health and medical services.”