MCHD's new nurse practitioner is part of plan to offer more services

Jun. 13, 2024

By Mary Wade Burnside

As Monongalia County Health Department gathers input from the community about how it can better serve patients, at least one piece of the formula is already in place.
Haley Tucker, APRN (advanced professional registered nurse), has recently joined the staff of MCHD Clinical Services as the new nurse practitioner.
Tucker has taken over the position after the recent retirement of Julie Armistead, who had been with the health department for about 20 of the last 40 years.
In this position, Tucker will be the primary nurse who provides the health department’s free and low-cost birth control options to patients.
Tucker will also help spearhead MCHD’s plan to offer a clinic to provide PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis), a drug that helps prevent individuals from getting HIV.
“And in the near future, we hope to offer some primary care options,” Tucker added.
Tucker, a native of Morgantown, has three undergraduate degrees from WVU, in psychology, animal & nutritional services and nursing, which makes her well-rounded to deal with a variety of patient issues.
“I was taking too many classes and then I only had a few more classes to get a degree,” she explained.
She worked as an emergency department bedside nurse and eventually went to Penn State to earn her master’s degree to become an APRN.
“Even when I was just working on becoming a nurse, I knew that I always wanted to continue my education and go to the next level and not just be able to care for people, but also to diagnose and treat them,” Tucker said.
Monongalia County Health Department has been looking toward the future in several ways, including by undergoing accreditation offered by the Washington, D.C.-based Public Health Accreditation Board and also implementing a strategic plan.
As part of the strategic plan, MCHD’s leaders held two town hall meetings this past week and is still conducting a short survey, which can be accessed on social media (Facebook, Instagram and X) using the handle @wvmchd, and on the website home page, monchd.org.
Although nurses at Monongalia County Health Department have already undergone Safe Zone training through the WVU LGBTQ+ Center, the staff will be taking the class again, said Jennifer Goldcamp, RN, program manager for MCHD Clinical Services.
And Tucker fits into this plan as well.
“Haley has been identified as our champion for our LBGTQ community,” Goldcamp said. “We’re going to go through the Safe Zone training again to make people feel more comfortable. And we will be offering the PrEP and trying to explore new ways to treat our underserved community. There are undocumented people and others for whom we are a safety net.”
Goldcamp noted that offering some primary care will be an evolving process.
“With our reproductive care patients, if they want to come in, we want to be able to address their anxiety or depression, their prediabetes and hypertension, or maybe they will come in with an upper respiratory infection,” she said.
Sometimes younger patients don’t always have a primary care provider and a gynecologist ends up treating them for issues that might otherwise be addressed by a general practitioner, Goldcamp added.
Added Tucker: “As a family nurse practitioner, I’m excited to open up the treatment and care options for Monongalia County Health Department. In my new position, I’m excited to grow the Clinical Services program and to provide new care options.”
A graduate of Morgantown High School, Tucker began robotics in the third grade and eventually helped to create the Mountain Area RoboticS (MARS) team that went on to win world championships.
“I really liked it because it was a hobby my dad and I got to do and the competitions were always new and exciting and enabled us to travel all over the country and meet people from all over the world.
Tucker has an 18-month-old daughter, Adeline, with her partner Lucas Hilsbos. She also runs, but noted that “children make you lose a lot of hobbies.”
She had prior experience with babies when she fostered two of them during the COVID pandemic in what was a quick decision she made one day at work.
“I knew I was taking them home that day.”