Dr. Jody Hershey, M.D., M.P.H. . . . is a native and resident of southwestern Virginia, and presently serves as the Public Health Director of the multi-jurisdictional New River Health District. In this capacity, he provides leadership and direction within the Virginia Department of Health and oversees all public health promotion, disease prevention, and environmental protection activities in the city of Radford and the counties of Floyd, Giles, Montgomery, and Pulaski. Dr. Hershey’s previous 18+ years of employment encompasses positions at both the local and state public health levels and in two state agencies, as well as in the private and corporate health care sectors.
Dr. Hershey obtained a Bachelor of Science in Biology from Roanoke College, Salem, Virginia, and a Doctor of Medicine from the Eastern Virginia Medical School, Norfolk, Virginia. His postgraduate medical education includes residency and fellowship training in Family Practice and Preventive Medicine with board certification in both specialties, as well as a Master of Public Health in Epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins University, School of Hygiene and Public Health. He is a Diplomate of the American Board of Family Practice and a Fellow of the American College of Preventive Medicine.
Dr. Hershey is a member of and serves in leadership positions and on numerous committees for a variety of public and private Boards of Directors, as well as local, regional, state, and national professional organizations, medical societies, health governance, and advisory boards including the American Public Health Association (APHA), National Association of City and County Health Officials (NACCHO), Public Health Leadership Society, Southeast Public Health Leadership Institute, Institute for Community Health, Southwest Virginia Medical Society, and Hollins Communication Research Institute. He is President-Elect of NACCHO and will become President in July, 2003. He has taught in several academic and medical institutions and continues to teach at the undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral levels.
Dr. Hershey has received many awards on a local, state, and national basis such as the Lions Club, Kiwanis, and Lutheran Brotherhood Leadership Awards. He received the 2000 NACCHO Award for Excellence in Environmental Health and a 2001 NACCHO Award for Excellence in Creating Healthy Communities recognizing his local health agency’s outstanding, significant, and innovative activities and programs in the area of environmental health and in creating and building healthy communities, respectively. Dr. Hershey also recently received the 2002 J. Howard Beard Award from NACCHO that nationally recognized his local public health agency for its outstanding, significant, and exemplary programs and activities. His health district was selected and served as one of 41 Turning Point community partners, a national public health reform effort jointly sponsored by the W.K. Kellogg and Robert Wood Johnson Foundations. He was also one of an elite group of national public health leaders selected to serve as a 1996-1997 Scholar in The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/University of California Public Health Leadership Institute, an Institute to strengthen America’s public health system by enhancing leadership capacities of the Nation’s top public health officials.
Dr. Hershey’s professional and academic interests, publications, and presentations include a diversity of public health and health care topics. Two of his special interests include health education/promotion/disease prevention and media advocacy, and he has appeared on major local, regional, and national radio and television networks and affiliates in the United States and Asia. Also, he has served as a medical consultant and commentator for local radio and television networks with national affiliation. He is presently serving as a medical consultant to New Dominion Pictures, a Suffolk, Virginia production company and to the Discovery Channel. His successful public health leadership of Virginia’s first Legionnaire’s disease outbreak investigation in the New River Valley in 1996, the first ever documented in Virginia, has been featured in reality-based series such as “Vital Signs—Deadly Mist” on the ABC television network, on Nippon TV (NBC’s affiliate in Japan), and most recently on the premier episode of the Discovery Channel’s “Diagnosis Unknown—Tracking a Killer,” one of twelve hour-long documentaries featuring extraordinary stories and heroics of doctors, patients, and other health care professionals. On a more personal note, Jody is a gentleman farmer and a triathlete. We are very pleased to have Jody on our Advisory Board!
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