New public health educator offers a dose of healthy advice

Ashley Rackers, Cole County's public health educator.
Ashley Rackers, Cole County's public health educator.

The Cole County Health Department's new public health educator plans to spend her time out in the community trying to show residents how they can live a healthy life.

Ashley Rackers was born and raised in Jefferson City. Her parents were teachers at Jefferson City Public Schools. After graduating from Jefferson City High School, Rackers went to University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg, where she graduated after studying nursing.

"I was the only one in my family to not go into education as my career," Rackers said. "Everybody is a teacher in my family, and I was the black sheep and went into nursing. Now, here I am in nursing education.

"It's truly my love and passion is to reach out to people."

She started her career in Kansas City then returned to Jefferson City in 2006 where to work at both Capital Region Medical Center and St. Mary's Hospital doing and labor and delivery service. She later worked as an educator at Boone Hospital and taught classes there to those who wanted to go to nursing school.

Rackers said her job will be to get out in the community so people don't have to come to the health department for whatever needs they may have.

"I'll be working with child care centers and talk with mothers about how to keep their infants safe after birth," she said. "The majority of my work will be to help prevent diseases while promoting health."

Already last week Rackers gave a presentation on nutrition to teenagers, along with presentations on diabetes and childhood obesity.

"I was surprised there was a lack of education about many health issues," she said, how much people don't understand and how much of a need for education there is. So we're looking at: How do we get things off the ground?"