Lowcountry AHEC (Area Health Education Center) is honoring the retirement of Diane Mathews after 27 years of service to the area.
AHEC is the Area Health Education Center. Mathews explains AHEC’s mission. “Our basic goal is to bring health care health through health careers, to rural and underserved areas to find that population parity. We do that through three core services at the center level. First of all, there is the Health Careers Program. We have two coordinators, and they work with high schools and early college students to help them discern what kind of a health career they want to get into. The next piece is health profession students, and we have four student houses. AHEC has 12 underserved counties, and we have houses that we rent in Walterboro, Orangeburg, Beaufort, and Bamberg. The two coordinators work with the Medical University and other universities with their medicine programs, primarily primary care but also rehab and anything graduate level. The last thing we do is continuing education for health professionals.”
Mathew’s adds, “I think I think one of the big things is we’re doing more within the 12 counties. We’ve got more high schools and tech schools that we’re working with. We had one student house before so we’ve grown because we’ve 12 counties and we’ve gotten additional funding to increase staff. We’ve got 10, including myself. We’ve done our consortium, which for continuing education was approved by the Board in 2006. We have pretty much all the hospitals in the 12 counties, and some clinics and things like that. Over the years, healthcare has changed, clinics are pretty much owned by hospitals now. Healthcare changes so AHEC must change with it.”
Mathews was a native of Michigan attending Michigan State in the clinical lab program. After living in Virginia, she moved to Charleston and found the Medical University and loved the master’s program. Her first AHEC office was is Hampton in 1994 and after becoming Director in 2002, she moved the office to Walterboro to be closer to Charleston.
One of Mathews achievements is the Walterboro facility, “I think the thing I’m most proud of is building this building. We were in Hampton, we were renting. The board said we you know; this is crazy to be renting. So we bought the land and built this and it’s paid for.
Mathews is proud of her staff, “We have a new position. She’s just been here for a few months. But everybody else has been here 5 years, 10 years, or 20 years. Everybody been here a long time. We have Emily Warren and Kim Stevens from Williams who do health professional student coordination. Diana Karen and Jasmine Douglas run the continuing education program. Then to Laci Green, and she’s been in the Health Careers Program. Rhonda Johnson has got background working with historically black colleges and universities which we have starting to work with them and the tech colleges. Ashley Breland is our finance assistant, and Tracy Wilson handles the front and phone calls.
Mathew’s enjoys her position with AHEC but is looking forward to retirement, She come from a large family and looks forward to time with family, “I’m one of six kids from Michigan. I’ve got two brothers and three sisters. Her husband Dave had two children when we started dating. They now have four kids and the oldest one lives in Shanghai, China, teaching English. After marrying a girl from Shanghai, they have a son who’s going to be four. They traveled to China to meet their grandson last year. Their daughter Caroline works in Charlotte they have twins, Taylor and Tyler. Tyler is married, lives in Beaufort, and has a daughter Juniper and they are having a little boy in July. Taylor lives in Houston.
Mathew will be moving to the mountains of North Carolina and she says, “I have always liked the mountains, I will go hiking in the mountains, I have a sister that moved to Blowing Rock a few years ago, and I get to be close to a sibling. We already belong to a church up there. So, I’ll be working in St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Boon, NC. There’s a lot of opportunity with Appalachian State University. I like to ride my bike; I like to cook. I’m going to be a busy person.
We asked he what she would like to see for AHEC in 10 years, “I’d love to see that we made a difference by bringing dentists and physicians in to the community. It can be very rewarding to work in family practice and to see people grow up through your practice and so I like to see more rural and underserved communities be able to access care here and not have to go to urban areas.”
