Smith named interim health director

Robbinsville – Graham County commissioners appointed Meggan Smith – a Robbinsville-based family nurse practitioner – to fill in as interim public health director, following Beth Booth’s impending departure from the Public Health Department on Feb. 3.

The Board of Commissioner recessed from its Jan. 17 meeting and reconvened at the Public Health Department the following day to discuss the situation, followed by a vote to appoint Smith.

Smith is a Graham County native who has been seeing patients at Smoky Mountain Urgent Care, but that practice lost its lease from the county, and the contract from the county to provide urgent care and medical imaging services. Smoky Mountain Urgent Care will end services in Graham County by next week, while Graham County commissioners negotiate a contract with Dr. David Booth, a Mississippi-based osteopath and part-time resident of Nantahala.

Booth resigned as public health director earlier this month over the board of commissioners’ handling of controversy involving the availability of Ella, a medically-accepted emergency contraceptive that critics regard as an abortion pill, and the termination of Brandi Adams, a peer support specialist at Tallulah Community Health Center in Robbinsville who lost her job after visiting the public health department seeking information about Ella.

Booth called the CEO of Tallulah Community Health Center’s parent company following Adams’ visit and just prior to Adams losing her job.

Smith could have continued practicing at Smoky Mountain Urgent Care’s Bryson City practice, but said she didn’t want to leave her patients in Graham County.

“I love my patients here,” she said, adding that some of them can’t make the drive to Bryson City and she would hate to leave them. “I have the utmost respect for the current director and I am sad to see her go. I do not intend to step on any toes in the transition – I hope to only serve as a buffer for the staff while a permanent candidate is selected. It is to be a very brief position as my primary focus is on providing primary care services to the citizens of Robbinsville which I do plan to continue to do to the best of my abilities even during my service as interim.”

She and her husband Rittney Smith are building an RV Park business and have no intention to leave Graham County, she said.

Smith has been a nurse in one form or another since she graduated from high school in 2009. She received an associate’s degree in nursing from Tri-County Community College in 2014, a bachelor of science in nursing from UNC-Wilmington in 2016, and a master’s degree in Family Nurse Practitioner from Frontier Nursing University in Hyden, Ky., in 2019. She is also a member of the Graham County Health Advisory Board, and is well-known by both medical community and the many patients she has seen over the years.

“I’ve seen how things unfolded,” she said. “I have a working relationship with the (public health department) staff. I believe the commissioners knew I would be able to communicate with them.”

Her first priority as interim public health director will be to address staffing shortages that – if allowed to continue – could jeopardize funding for services those staff positions provide. She said her serving in an interim role buys county commissioners time to adequately advertise for a permanent director and make a thoughtful selection.

She has no specific plans once her interim position expires, other than that she will remain in Graham County.

“I have to be in Robbinsville for my patients,” she said. “Leaving Robbinsville is not an option.”