The Mission

The mission of the Center for Rural Health Innovation is to "employ new and emerging health technologies to improve access to quality health care in rural communities".

The Story

The Center for Rural Health Innovation was founded as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation in the state of North Carolina in 2010.  The founding Board included Steve North, MD MPH as Chair, Dr. Dan Barron, PhD as Vice Chair, Amanda K Martin as Treasurer & Lynda Kinnane, MPH as Secretary & Keith Holtsclaw, FACHE. The expressed purpose of CRHI is to “employ new and emerging health technologies to improve access to quality health care in rural communities”.

​

Before the formal organization of CRHI, work had already begun on the Health-e-Schools program. Graham Children’s Health Services (now PATH) acted as an incubator, offering grant management support & an umbrella for the fledgling program to grow under with significant support from Suzette Renfro and Amy Sheele.

​

Dr. Steve North began working on the MY Health-e-Schools program in 2007. Named MY for Mitchell-Yancey, the MY was later dropped as the program expanded geographically. After developing an initial plan as fellow in the Jim Bernstein Rural Health Leaders program Steve raised $45,000 in planning funds from the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Community Foundation of Western North Carolina. These funds were used to conduct a comprehensive community assessment and further develop the overall plan that proved critical in raising the funds for project implementation. From 2009 the MY Health-e-Schools program and its partners successfully raised $620,000 for equipment purchases, received $237,000 for operating expenses, and were awarded a 3-year state grant of $43,000 annually from August 2012 through August 2015.

​

The first fulltime employee, Executive Director Amanda Martin, was hired in summer 2011. Health-e-Schools began a telehealth pilot in three schools in September 2011. The successful pilot led to additional funding to expand to all the schools in Mitchell County and all but two in Yancey, as they had School Health Centers.  These fourteen sites are the core of the Health-e-Schools program to this day.

​

In 2013 funding from the Duke Endowment, in collaboration with Mission Health Foundation, allowed Health-e-Schools to expand to McDowell County schools. The funding also allowed the development of a vetted process for successful selection and implementation of school-telehealth sites. This process has been used many times over the following years and has been shared widely.

​

2014 saw the addition of several McDowell sites and the first six sites in Burke County.

The Tipton Hill Clinic finally opened in early 2017 after several years of planning and attempts to find funding and a reasonable, sustainable structure for the program. By this time, all of the schools in McDowell and Burke had joined the Health-e-Schools network.