As Hurricane Helene tore through Asheville, Dr. Bryan Hodge shoveled water away from the doorway of the flooding basement where his children and wife were hunkered down. Hodge could hear trees toppling over nearby, then realized that one had just crashed across his house.
The 150-year-old hickory punctured the roof in several places, letting rain come in.
Despite his predicament, Hodge went to work the next day at UNC Health’s Pardee Hospital in Hendersonville to treat patients. Hodge also supported care in the ensuing days at a Buncombe County emergency shelter and at pop-up clinics. He lucked out when a tree removal company working in his neighborhood cleared the hickory off his house and covered the roof with a tarp.
Hodge is chief academic officer for the Mountain Area Health Education Center, a western North Carolina-based nonprofit, and UNC Health Sciences at MAHEC. He is also program director for rural health initiatives at the health sciences campus.
Created in 2017 by the University and MAHEC, UNC Health Sciences at MAHEC addresses western North Carolina’s growing health care needs as an interprofessional branch campus partnership. It includes innovative health education programs that train students from Carolina’s schools of medicine, dentistry, pharmacy and global public health. The schools are producing rural practitioners who want to counteract health care disparities and build an interprofessional health workforce for western North Carolina and the entire state.
Like Hodge, UNC Health Sciences at MAHEC students, faculty and staff have been helping with hurricane recovery since Helene hit in September 2024. They delivered food, set up a medical clinic, cranked up chainsaws to remove fallen trees and much more.
After Helene’s devastation in parts of western North Carolina, community partnerships are more important than ever to meet urgent health needs while communities rebuild. The combination of MAHEC’s expertise in workforce development and UNC-Chapel Hill’s world-class research and educational excellence is a foundation for people as they recover from the hurricane.
That recovery includes work that Hodge’s team is doing to establish rural teaching practices across the region and a rural family medicine residency program in Watauga County in the state’s northwestern corner.
UNC Health Sciences at MAHEC team response
MAHEC and its partners have provided hurricane relief in many ways.
UNC Adams School of Dentistry:
- The MAHEC dentistry team collected and distributed hygiene kits and healthcare supplies to shelters.
- Katherine Jowers, director of the school’s rural oral health scholars program, turned a community church into a resource hub, which received and distributed resources and food, provided shelter, made daily announcements and delivered health and safety support.
Eshelman School of Pharmacy: The dual-campus model proved its strength:
- The Chapel Hill and Asheville campuses conducted donation drives, distributed medication and collaborated with relief agencies.
- Laura Bratsch, registrar and curriculum manager for both campuses, collected more than 150 gallons of water, $2,600, baby supplies, pet food, inhalers and EpiPens in 48 hours.
- An emergency fund raised over $150,000 for students who need relief.
- Faculty and students volunteered at local clinics and set up pop-up urgent care facilities.
- The school’s commitment to emergency preparedness showcased its dedication to serving North Carolina.
UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health: Students, faculty and staff in the UNC Asheville-UNC Gillings Master of Public Health program helped neighbors in Buncombe, Henderson and Yancey counties by:
- Providing mental health counseling at shelters
- Distributing food and needed supplies to neighborhoods
- Staffing pharmacies, managing shelters and clearing trees
UNC School of Medicine: The school’s efforts included:
- Faculty, including Dr. Benjamin Gilmer at the UNC Health Sciences at MAHEC campus, helped establish an emergency pop-up clinic in the hard-hit community of Swannanoa.
Support Carolina’s and MAHEC’s efforts to help western North Carolinians on the long road to recovery from the effects of Helene.
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