Summers County ARH Nurse finds her calling in Senior Care

NEWS RELEASE - August 7, 2026

Summers County ARH Nurse honored with systemwide recognition for academic pursuits

HINTON, W.Va. - When she walks across the stage one short year from now, Jessica Meadows-Harbert, at that point a newly minted Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner, will have done three things she said her younger self would have never imagined.

"Well, I wanted to be a chef when I grew up," she said with a laugh. "Healthcare was not on the radar, and I never imagined I'd spend so much time in school.

"But I guess life doesn't always take you where you think you're going."

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Meadows-Harbert, an RN and the director of the Summers County ARH Hospital Senior Care Program, started her healthcare journey after following high school classmates into CNA training.

"I was in a relationship and decided to forgo plans to become a chef and stay home instead," she said. "Hinton is so small and a lot of girls my age were going into that program so I decided I would try that, too."

It wasn't the career she envisioned, but she soon realized it was the one she wanted.

"I got through my training, and it just clicked," she said. "I realized I loved it and that was just kind of that."

Meadows-Harbert spent the next 13 years primarily in long-term care in Summers County but was working as a CNA at a nearby acute care hospital in 2009, when a personal tragedy led her to change course.

"I was 8 months pregnant with my second child and ended up having a stillborn," she said. "I don't remember anything about the doctor or anyone else in that room, but I remember the nurse and I told her I wanted to be a nurse, too.

"I said, 'I want to be the same kind of nurse as you so I can help people like you did me.'"

She laughs when she recalls standing in line with "100 19-year-olds" as she began working toward an associate degree in nursing at Bluefield State University.

"It was kind of a surreal experience," she said. "I had been out of school so long and I knew nothing about nothing, so I was really thankful for the 19-year-olds in the end because they helped me a lot."

Meadows-Harbert was two months into her studies when she and her former husband learned they were again expecting.

"It was stressful with everything that had happened before and now I'm juggling being a mother to my son, who was 9 at the time, working part-time and going to school full-time while in a high-risk pregnancy," she said.

She made it through, though, and two weeks after her first year final exams, her daughter was born via C-section.

"And four weeks later, I was back in school for my final year of the program," she said.

Meadows-Harbert's first post-graduate job was at Summers County ARH, where she spent time working in different areas before taking a nightshift position in the emergency department.

"I absolutely loved it and would have stayed there, but I got divorced and needed a dayshift job so I could be home in the evenings and nights with my kids," she said.

After spending the next 8 years working in skilled nursing and rehabilitation, a newly posted position back at Summers ARH caught her attention.

"They were reinstating their senior program and needed a nurse to help rebuild it," she said.

So, in September 2023, she got to work, building the program designed to help local Medicare age and Medicare eligible residents struggling with depression stemming from issues including loss, loneliness and health-related challenges.

"We provide the therapy - one-on-one, group and family therapy - to help get them back on track," she said of the program that typically lasts 6-to-12 weeks.

The position, she said, is the perfect fit for her as it enabled her to return to helping the population closest to her heart.

"I absolutely love working with our older patients," she said, adding she often feels like she's in a room full of people who want to "grandmother and grandfather" her. "They're full of wisdom and love. They spent their lives taking care of other people and now I just feel like it's our turn to help them."

Since 2023, Summers County ARH Senior Care has grown to 12 patients - the maximum size allowed. But Meadows-Harbert said struggles finding a psychiatric provider to serve as the program's medical director was not easy.

"The state has a shortage of mental health providers and Hinton didn't have one at all," she said.

It's that shortage - as well as a desire to help patients in other ways - that led Meadows-Harbert back to the classroom where she received her bachelor's degree in nursing in 2025 and will graduate with her master's degree in 2027.

"For years and years, I said I would never go back to school," she said with a laugh. "But I felt a sense of responsibility to make sure Hinton always has a mental health provider and that this program will always have someone to lead it."

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Meadows-Harbert was recently named a recipient of ARH's EDcellence Award, a system-wide honor recognizing employees who demonstrate outstanding commitment to education, professional growth, and personal development.

It was a recognition she said she was both surprised and honored to receive.

And though her educational pursuits were not always included in her long-term plans, she said she encourages others to think outside the box and to not be afraid of trying something new.

"I know it's easy to tell someone to not be afraid," she said. "But really, if you don't start, you'll never finish. So, just do it."

Meadows-Harbert resides in Hinton with her husband, Ronnie Harbert, and her 16-year-old daughter Keyonna. Her son Marcus is now 25.

Though not a chef, she moonlights as the owner of the BakeHouse, a cottage bakery.

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About Appalachian Regional Healthcare (ARH)
Appalachian Regional Healthcare (ARH) traces its roots back to 1955, when the United Mine Workers of America opened the Miners Memorial Hospital system - a network of 10 hospitals dedicated to providing care throughout the coalfields of eastern Kentucky and southern West Virginia. Seventy years later, ARH has grown into a 14-hospital not-for-profit health system that serves more than 500,000 residents of central Appalachia each year. ARH hospitals in Barbourville, Harlan, Hazard, Hyden, Martin, McDowell, Middlesboro, Paintsville, Prestonsburg, West Liberty, Whitesburg, and South Williamson in Kentucky, and Beckley and Hinton in West Virginia, ensure that residents, tucked away in even the most remote areas, can access the highest quality of care without traveling hours from home. ARH's hospitals, clinics, multi-specialty physician practices, home health agencies, home medical equipment stores, retail pharmacies, and medical spas boast more than 6,700 employees with a network of more than 1,300 providers, making it the single largest employer in southeastern Kentucky and the third-largest private employer in southern West Virginia.