Welcome to the Pioneers in Health podcast. In this podcast, we share inspiring stories of pioneering leaders from our nation and from your backyard who are working to improve health.

In episode 30, we interview Karen Weis, PhD, RNC-OB, FAAN. She is a decorated U.S. Air Force veteran and noted researcher who serves as a nursing professor and dean of the KU Medical Center’s School of Nursing-Salina Campus. She also serves as the associate director of research for the Kansas Center for Rural Health and holds the Christine A. Hartley Rural Health Nursing Professorship.

In this episode, Karen discusses growing up on a farm in Kansas before graduating from nursing school and joining the Air Force for 30 years. She was assigned to work in obstetrics at a very rural hospital in Oklahoma.

“I never imagined in 100 years that the Air Force would tell me they wanted me to work in obstetrics. I hated OB in nursing school,” she said.

However, through that assignment, she learned how to become an OB nurse and went on to lead some of the U.S. Department of Defense’s largest maternal child units — running both inpatient and outpatient at various locations. She also served six deployments during that time and even served as a flight nurse during her military career, in addition to providing high-risk critical care obstetrics.

She was then provided with the opportunity to return to her hometown of Salina to work for KU Medical Center’s School of Nursing-Salina Campus, which is focused on rural health.

“It’s just been a great, great relocation for me,” she said. “The stars aligned, and it couldn’t be better.”

She discusses her role and efforts the School of Nursing-Salina Campus is taking to educate and address a variety of rural health issues, including workforce development and how to sustain rural maternal health care access.

She recently completed a research report documenting the availability of maternity care across Kansas, which was conducted in partnership with the Health Fund. The most surprising finding, she said, busted a myth that there are no young people in rural communities.

“This myth that there is no need for obstetrical services in these rural, frontier communities because there is nobody of reproductive age, that couldn’t be further from the truth, actually,” she said.

One of the most important findings, she said, was that Wallace and Grant counties had the largest ratio of reproductive-aged women to live births — both of which are in far western Kansas without any inpatient services available.

She also discussed other findings from the report, including the distances to different services.

“There is a big swath of Kansas that the individuals are traveling 30-60 miles to get inpatient delivery services, and that’s a long ways on unpaved, gravel roads, non-highway or not interstate,” she said. “That doesn’t sound like much when you’re going down the interstate, but that’s a lot on country roads.”

She also discusses:

• Her experience working as a nurse in the military
• The path that led to pursuing her masters and PhD while serving in the Air Force
• An intervention she developed called “Mentors Offering Maternal Support” to reduce pregnancy-specific anxiety and support healthy birth outcomes
• Access to maternity care in Kansas
• The benefits and challenges of using telehealth to serve rural pregnant women
• What gives her hope

And much more! Listen now, and learn more about how Karen is an innovative leader in health care in Kansas.

Listen now

Listen below or on any of your favorite podcast services. Like and subscribe to stay up-to-date with each new episode!