KAREN:  Okay.  This is Karen Brewster and I'm here in Anchorage with Linda Curda.  Today is August 25th, 2005.  And this is for the Community Health Aides Project.  Thank you for being willing to be interviewed and taking time out of your busy day.
 
LINDA:  You're welcome.  I'm glad that you're here and it's nice to be talking about this program, this incredible Community Health Aide Practitioner Program. 

KAREN:  Great.  Well, just to get us started, tell us a little bit about you, your background, you know, when and where you were born, education, how you ended up in Alaska --. 

LINDA:  Okay. 

KAREN:  -- doing what you do. 

LINDA:  I was -- I grew up outside Washington D.C. in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and went to the University of Maryland School of Nursing.  And when I graduated, my husband and I looked at each other one day and said, let's drive to Alaska. 

So we drove here in 1972 from the East Coast, landed in Anchorage, and within a week, we both had jobs in Bethel. 

And I was a staff nurse at the old Indian Health Service Hospital where the new YKHC office building is actually located.  And went to work rotating shifts in the old hospital.  And then became head of the obstetrical ward and did that for a while.  And through my experience with birth and babies and all of that, I decided to go back to school. 

I had been interested in Public Health all my nursing career and Johns Hopkins University had a program of a combined Nurse Midwifery and Masters in Public Health. 

So I went back East from '75 to '77 at Hopkins, it was a dual program, sort of woven together as we took courses in world population and crisis issues, and then had patients in labor and delivery at night.  It was -- it was a grueling two years, but it was very rewarding and I -- it was a good combination for my interest and skills. 

And my plan had been to come back to Bethel as the town midwife, and as I was graduating, two things happened.  One was I was asked if I would stay and teach in the program, and I was surprised by that request by the director of the program. 

And my husband decided to go to law school.  So he went to law school in Washington D.C., and I started teaching at Hopkins in 1977.  We drove -- I drove north and he drove south, and taught at Hopkins in the midwifery program for three years. 

And my husband graduated from law school, and I had moved us East to graduate school, it was his turn to make a decision, and he wanted to move back to Alaska. 

So one day he got a call from a judge in Bethel who said -- who we didn't know directly but this is a small state.  Dale had applied for jobs in Juneau, and the judge said we have a new position on the bench and we would like you to come and take it.  So that was in 1980 and we drove back to Alaska. 

And I thought that I was -- by this time my daughter had been born and I thought that I would be the town midwife, that's all that I always thought that I'd do, and we moved back to Bethel, my daughter was one, and thought I would just sort of be a mom for a while.
 
I had worked from the time I was 17 in -- as a nurse's aide and a scrub nurse in the OR and to nursing school, and so it's just sort of let's take a break.  You know, it's been 14 years working, but I found that I really enjoy contributing, making a difference, and decided I would look at a part-time job. 

Well, there was a part-time job within the training program in Bethel, for the Community Health Aide Program.  And that was in the fall of '80.  And I started there as a part-time basis. 

And within a year, my son was born, took a little bit of time, and in the fall of 1982, I became the coordinator of the Bethel Community Health Aide Training Program, which, at that time, was located within the Kuskokwim Community College campus with a memorandum of agreement between the community college and YKHC for the training of their health aides.  And that was the beginning of a long journey with the Health Aide Program. 

So for the last 25 years, I've primarily been on the training aspect of the program.  Basic training center, and then been involved in a variety of the projects of the program, the health aide manual, the village medicine reference, the curriculum, materials that support and surround the program.