Center for Excellence in Rural Health-Hazard

Director

Fran Feltner, a longtime nurse and lay health worker administrator, began her term as the University of Kentucky Center for Excellence in Rural Health-Hazard’s director on June 1, 2011.

Feltner has worked in rural health for 35 years, from serving as a nurse in clinical and hospital settings to her current full-time role as director of the Center for Rural Health’s lay health workers division. Her programs have won numerous state and national awards. Kentucky Homeplace, a patient assistance initiative, received the National Rural Health Association’s 2008 Outstanding Rural Health Program Award, the Health Kentucky organization’s 2007 Advocacy Award, and in 2005 was named one of 13 "Models That Work" by the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky. Also, in 2004, the Southeast Kentucky Community Access Program − a disease case management project − received one of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services’ eight initial Innovations in Prevention awards.

Individually, Feltner has received the Southern Health Association’s Charles G. Jordan Memorial Award "for contributions to public health" and UK’s A. Paul Nestor Creativity Award in recognition of "fiscally efficient management." In 2003, she testified at a congressional briefing in support of the Patient Navigator, Outreach and Chronic Disease Prevention Act, which President Bush later signed into law.

Feltner earned a licensed practical nurse degree from Hazard Area Technical College (1975), a registered nurse degree from Hazard Community College (2000) and a bachelor of science in nursing degree from Eastern Kentucky University (2004). She has since earned a master of science in nursing degree from EKU (2008), with an emphasis in advanced practice rural public health nursing administration, and is pursuing a doctor of nursing practice degree from UK. Feltner also is a 2006 graduate of the Johnson & Johnson/UCLA Health Executive Program, a management development program exclusively for executive directors and leaders of community-based health care organizations.

Feltner co-authored the research note "Kentucky Homeplace Defeat Diabetes Screening Test: An Analysis of Rural Kentucky’s Challenge to Overcome the Growing Diabetes Epidemic," which was published in the July 2005 edition of the Journal of the Kentucky Medical Association. She also has been published in Rural Roads, the National Rural Health Association’s 20,000-circulation quarterly magazine.