"More than 10 years ago, Molly (Kaser, CFH's Executive Director) and I started dreaming about school-based health centers. Today we have two - with I hope more to come." Linda serves on almost every local committee that addresses the health of children, including the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative, Jackson Asthma Coalition, Jackson County Substance Abuse Prevention Coalition, Jackson Tobacco Reduction Coalition and the Safe & Drug-Free Schools Advisory Board - just to name a few!

All of these groups are working to ensure kids are successful. "We are ensuring that the whole child will be taken care of through a team approach." Jackson Public Schools is taking this program seriously, and the School Board has even adopted the philosophy as one of its own goals.

"I've been fortunate to work with Dan Evans. His heart is really in it to make our students successful. He sees the correlation between school success and health." "This is a paradigm shift - for everyone. And it takes time. Change is slow, but already we are seeing positive things." We aren't going to be able to correlate higher test scores directly to the fact that kids' health is improving. But our staff, our teachers and our parents are all seeing the benefits.

Steps have been taken in a variety of areas, including nutrition. While improving kids' nutrition will also help with our community's obesity issues, it has other major benefits. Dr. Grover, CFH dental director, presented to the school board the crisis occurring in the dental health of our children, how much decay was occurring and how much of it was as a result of soda. She was instrumental in removing the student pop vending machines.

CFH is very excited about another positive step JPS is taking. Jackson Public Schools is supporting CFH's mobile dental program and will be transitioning all of JPS schools to the CFH program. This program will allow children who depend on the mobile dental services to have access to local dentists for follow up care.

Linda and her husband Chris have been married 27 years. They have 3 children and 2 grandchildren.