CHCM Members
Community Health Corps Montana is a statewide AmeriCorps program that places dedicated individuals in full-time service roles with organizations across Montana. CHCM members help build healthier communities by addressing the root causes of health challenges, behavioral health, chronic disease, and social determinants of health, through outreach, education, building capacity, and partnership development.
Meet the Second CHCM Cohort
CHCM AmeriCorps members are currently serving across Montana from September 2026 to July 2027. Together, they represent a range of academic backgrounds, lived experiences, and career aspirations — all united by a commitment to strengthening community health.
Serving full-time alongside host sites in rural and tribal Montana communities, members support initiatives ranging from community outreach and education to partnership development and systems coordination.
Below, meet the individuals behind the service.
Christina Hering
Serving with: Sidney Health Center
I am serving in the chronic care management program at Sidney Health Center. My role is focused on connecting individuals with chronic health conditions with preventative care. I am passionate about finding effective ways to serve individuals and communities, and I chose AmeriCorps to learn more about the needs of rural health programs. I plan to attend graduate school in Montana for occupational therapy. In my free time, I enjoy many hobbies including hiking, biking, swimming, skiing, reading, and arts and crafts.
Sidney, MT
Christina.Hering@sidneyhealth.org
Donna Howe
Serving with Messengers for Health
My name is Donna Ridesatthedoor-Howe, an enrolled member of the Blackfeet Nation in Browning, Montana. I graduated from Montana State University with a degree in Home Economics Education and spent many years serving communities across Montana as a Family and Consumer Sciences teacher. Later I continued my commitment to community connection and service as a Public Services Librarian in Hardin, Montana. As a second year Community Health Corps Montana member serving with Messengers for Health, I ensure cancer and dialysis patients, as well as elderly, can reliably access medical appointments and treatments through the transportation program. My commitment to service reflects the values of community, respect, and support that guide my service at Messengers for Health.
Crow Agency, MT
donna@messengersforhealth.org
Mashaya Alden
Serving with Messengers for Health
I am a member of the Apsaalooke (Crow) Nation, we are located in South Eastern Montana. I'm a mom to my one year old son. I love my people and my culture. I’ve always had a passion for caring, helping, and guiding others. I’ll be graduating with my associates in Human Services and plan to pursue my bachelors in Social Work. I’m serving with Americorps because I plan and hope to make a positive impact in my community. I will be providing my service at Messengers for Health in Crow Agency, MT. I am advocating for our Apsaalooke elders and will mostly be helping the female elders understand the new lifestyle we live in now. I hope to gain their trust and make sure they feel safe in their own environment.
Crow Agency, MT
mashaya@messengersforhealth.org
Janene Padilla
Serving with Salish Kootenai College -- Health Promotion Practices Department
My name is Janene Padilla. I am a graduate student pursuing a Master’s in Social Work and currently serve with AmeriCorps through Community Health Corps Montana in the Salish Kootenai College (SKC) Public Health Department. My educational background includes psychology and chemical dependency counseling. I am passionate about helping individuals and communities connect with resources and opportunities that promote health and well-being. I chose to serve because I want to give back to my community while gaining meaningful experience in public health and community outreach. My service focuses on promoting SKC’s Public Health programs, connecting with prospective students and community partners, sharing scholarship and student resources, and increasing awareness of educational and career opportunities in public health.
Pablo, MTjanene_padilla@skc.edu
Connor Knobel
Serving with Recovery Friendly Montana
I am a graduate of the University of Montana with a degree in Classics. AmeriCorps has given me the opportunity to dedicate my time to the community I love and the state I call home. I serve in Missoula with Recovery Friendly Montana (RMFT), a non-profit which provides education, resources, and training to employers and employees. Recovery Friendly hopes to reduce the stigma surrounding substance use disorders, and help Montanans during their recovery journey. My service will increase RFMT’s ability to designate new businesses, create Montana-specific toolkits for employers, and bolster RFMT’s commitment to a more supportive and open workplace.
Missoula, MT
connor@recoveryfriendlymt.org
Gavin Young
Serving with: Western Montana Area Health Education Center & Missoula Public Health
Hello! I'm Gavin Young. I'm completing my service term with Missoula Public Health (MPH) and Western Montana Area Health Education Center (WMT-AHEC). I grew up in Pennsylvania, about an hour north of Philadelphia, and moved to Montana in 2022 to pursue my undergraduate degree. I graduated with a bachelor's degree in Psychology and plan to begin a Master's in Social Work program next fall. Before joining MPH and WMT-AHEC, I worked in a variety of behavioral health settings while completing my studies. My primary project is helping establish and promote Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) programming throughout Missoula County. I believe MHFA is especially impactful because it equips everyday community members with practical tools and clear steps to support someone experiencing a mental health challenge or crisis.
Missoula, MT
gyoung@missoulacounty.us
Veda Sowder
Serving with Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes Food Sovereignty Program
Hi I’m Veda! While I am a recent University of Oregon graduate, I was raised between two reservations which has instilled the importance of sovereignty in all areas, combined with my personal love for feeding people, food Sovereignty was a clear fit! I'm serving because I wanted to come home and give back what was given to me. However, with the massive population influx of the state it didn’t seem fitting and I began to look into what areas needed service. Food Sovereignty is incredibly important because accessing healthy foods and educating the public on what to do with those ingredients is the first defense against serious health risks like diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and even cancer. Food and food education is healthcare, and reservations are incredibly close knit communities, when you love people you don’t just cook them good food, you cook them food that is good for them too!
Pablo, MTVeda.Sowder@cskt.org
Samantha McNair
Serving with Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes Food Sovereignty Program
Hi, my name is Samantha McNair, I am an AmeriCorp member serving out at Kicking Horse Montana, with the Confederated Salish & Kootenai Food Sovereignty Program. I have a fiance, Tristan Caye, our daughter is 12 and we live in Pablo, Montana. I will graduate this coming Spring from SKC with a Bachelor, an Associate, and a Workforce Certificate. When thinking about sovereignty, food is one of the most important aspects of being sovereign and to the health of the community. With chronic diseases being prominent in rural and tribal communities and the work that the Food Sovereignty program is doing towards reducing food scarcity, as well as increasing healthy food access is critical. Growing up here and seeing the peoples’ health suffer due to these things is why this opportunity to serve the community I have grown in is so important to me
Pablo, MT
Samantha.McNair@cskt.org
Isabella Mulder
Serving with Montana Office of Rural Health & Area Health Education Center
Growing up in Three Forks, MT, I have always had a passion for rural health. I recently graduated from MSU with a degree in microbiology and plan to attend medical school before returning to Montana as a pediatrician. I’m serving because I want to make a meaningful difference in rural Montana and help strengthen the health of the people in the communities I call home. My service focuses on increasing the impact of Community Health Corps Montana through partnership building, expanding program capacity, and supporting the program’s long-term sustainability.
Bozeman, MT
isabella.mulder@montana.edu
The 2026-2027 CHCM cohort brings together recent graduates, career changers, and community-rooted leaders. Some arrived with public health training. Others with communications, social work, education, or lived experience in rural or tribal communities. Together, they are strengthening Montana’s health systems from the ground up.
Member Stories
Samantha (Sammie) Abel served with the Richland County Health Department. A major focus of her service was the department’s Community Assessment for Public Health Emergency Response (CASPER), a structured community survey used to gather household-level information about community health and needs. The findings will help inform Richland County’s future health planning.
Over the past eight months, Sammie helped move the CASPER from planning to implementation. She worked alongside community partners to develop survey questions, helped recruit and train more than 20 volunteers, and led the collection of more than 200 completed community surveys. Once surveying was complete, she then switched gears to analyzing the results, transforming hundreds of conversations with community members into information that local leaders could use to strengthen emergency preparedness, prioritize health initiatives, and guide future investments.
The project reflects what AmeriCorps service is all about: building local capacity so communities have the information they need to make informed decisions. Rather than providing a one-time service, Sammie has helped create a process that empowers Richland County to better understand its residents and plan for the future.
For Sammie, survey day was also the culmination of months of preparation. She described the CASPER as her “baby” after “living and breathing” the survey questions and reflected on how meaningful it was to see her work in action. Her host site supervisor similarly emphasized the significance of her contribution: “Sammie has made it possible for Richland County to complete our CASPER Survey and begin our next community health assessment. We wouldn't have been able to prepare, refine, and conduct our CASPER survey [without her].”
Willow Purvis served jointly with Western Montana AHEC and Missoula Public Health, supporting efforts to expand youth mental health education and prevention in the Missoula community. A major focus of her service was building the foundation to bring Teen Mental Health First Aid (tMHFA) and Youth Mental Health First Aid (YMHFA) into Missoula County Public Schools.
Willow helped connect the project with key school partners, including Missoula County Public Schools Student Services and health department chairs from Sentinel, Hellgate, Big Sky, and Willard High Schools. She supported conversations about how tMHFA could fit within the school system and helped move the partnership from exploration toward implementation. This included submitting a Community Partner Application to train MCPS faculty and staff in YMHFA and advancing a second application focused on bringing tMHFA to high school freshmen and sophomores.
Willow’s host site supervisor identified these efforts as one of her most significant contributions, sharing, “She built a foundation to improve mental health in our community by implementing evidence-based programming for teens through Teen Mental Health First Aid training.” Her supervisor also noted that Willow “noticed opportunities and was proactive” and “kept the project moving forward even when things didn’t go as expected.”
Importantly, Willow’s work will not end with her AmeriCorps term. Western Montana AHEC and Missoula Public Health are currently hosting Gavin Young, another CHCM AmeriCorps member during the current service term, who is continuing to build on the partnerships, applications, and groundwork Willow established. Her service created a starting point for a longer-term effort to expand evidence-based mental health education for Missoula-area youth.
Donna Howe is a returning AmeriCorps member serving with Messengers for Health on the Crow Reservation, where her work helped remove one of the most persistent barriers to care—transportation. Through consistent, day-to-day service, Donna helped distribute over 150 gas cards to community members traveling often more than 100 miles round-trip to access essential care, including cancer treatment and dialysis, in Billings, MT.
In just one two-week period, she supported 49 patients and 11 elders, ensuring they could attend critical medical appointments. Donna brings structure and reliability to this work by maintaining regular office hours, tracking distributions, and building relationships with program participants, often meeting individuals where they are, including coordinating pick-ups at gas stations or assisting those with limited mobility.
Her service extends beyond transportation. Donna is an active presence in the community, sharing, “I teamed up with the Student advisor at the Little Bighorn College to serve a lunch to the students for the Wednesday Wellness. We served about 35 students.”
Ruby served with Greater Impact, a recovery-focused organization in Gallatin County, where she expanded support for individuals navigating substance use and recovery.
Recognizing a gap in immediate, tangible support for women entering recovery, Ruby took the initiative to design and pilot Wellness Resource Kits. These kits include human trafficking awareness materials, informational pamphlets Ruby created, and free resources, such as keychain infographics secured through the Blue Campaign, a national public awareness initiative to combat human trafficking. Each kit also contains practical and supportive items, including Narcan, drink covers, menstrual products, and sour candies to help disrupt panic responses.
Ruby led the project from concept to implementation, identifying needs, sourcing materials, and creating content, resulting in approximately 20 prototype kits now being distributed. “This is the first iteration of the kit, but I am hoping to make improvements during the rest of my service term,” Ruby explained in her member report. Her service reflects a thoughtful, proactive approach, creating tools that meet immediate needs while building sustainable, trauma-informed support systems for women in recovery.
"My AmeriCorps service has shown me that even small acts of service, such as providing information, connecting someone with a resource, or encouraging a student to pursue their education, can have a meaningful impact." - CHCM member in a post-service survey
Ready to Make an Impact?
Member Applications for the 2027-2028 service term will open in Spring 2027
Sign up to be notified when applications open
Questions?
For more information about Community Health Corps Montana, please contact:
Angela Davis
angela.davis9@montana.edu
406-994-2984
