Woman Receives Award For Contributions to Rural Health
A faculty member in Montana State University’s Mark and Robyn Jones College of Nursing has been recognized for her commitment and contributions to rural health in Montana including the Fort Peck Indian Reservation.
Assistant professor Julie Alexander-Ruff received the Dr. Frank Newman Rural Health Leadership in Education award, which is given annually by the Montana Office of Rural Health and Area Health Education Center and the Montana Rural Health Association. The award recognizes an individual who has shown exceptional leadership in and commitment to rural health and health care education in Montana.
“Julie Alexander-Ruff is well regarded across our state for her tireless efforts related to health care in rural areas, especially her work with American Indian children,” said Kailyn Mock, director of the Montana Office of Rural Health and AHEC. “She exemplifies what Dr. Newman represented, and we are delighted to recognize her contributions.”
Alexander-Ruff has almost 40 years of experience in pediatric and public health nursing serving in a variety of roles and settings, which ranged from nursing in a pediatric AIDS ward of National Children’s Hospital in the mid-1980s to being the director of a rural health care clinic serving vulnerable populations of children in Texas. She came to MSU in 2009 as a part-time nursing instructor and full-time doctoral student. Since then, her accomplishments include spearheading a partnership with the Fort Peck Tribes to provide undergraduate nursing students with a week-long cultural immersion service-learning clinical experience. As part of that experience, students work in school clinics on the Fort Peck Reservation during the day and sit with elders of the community in the evenings, listening to stories intended to provide insights into Native ways of knowing and being. The work earned her the 2015 President’s Award for Excellence in Service Learning.
To maintain her clinical skills, Alexander-Ruff has worked a few hours a week as the school nurse for Anderson School in rural Gallatin County and a few hours a month in the school clinic at Frontier School in Wolf Point.
As part of her efforts at these schools, she has implemented Centers for Disease Control and Prevention COVID-19 guidelines. She is currently leading Healing through Education, Art and Resilience Training, a multidisciplinary research project seeking to improve the resiliency of third-grade students by enhancing the classroom culture and facilitating the children’s expression through themed monthly art projects.
She has a doctorate in adult and higher education, a master’s degree in maternal and child health and post-master’s certification as a pediatric nurse practitioner. She also has a bachelor’s degree in nursing and a bachelor’s degree in early childhood development.
Newman was instrumental in founding the Montana WWAMI Medical School Program, the Montana Office of Rural Health, Montana AHEC, the Montana Family Medicine Residency Program and other programs. In addition, Newman counseled hundreds of young people interested in a career in medicine and other health professions. He was teaching in the WWAMI Targeted Rural Underserved Track at MSU and working at the Montana Office of Rural Health/AHEC until his death in 2011 at age 80.
