Page 24 - Healthcare Heroes 2025

HealthcareHEROES
A P R O G R A M O F B U S I N E S S W E S T & H E A L T H C A R E N E W S
Community Health
She Is Changing
Lives Through
Her Passion for
Nutrition
By Joseph Bednar
bednar@businesswest.com
long one.
“I’ve had a passion for it for a long time,”
Linda Koh’s journey to healthier eating is a life-
she said. “My grandmother was a great cook,
and she lived with us, so I was always wanting
to learn how to cook. And she was like, ‘no, your
job is a student; you need to study.’ She didn’t have
opportunities to study when she was younger, so she
always encouraged me to study, but I was always
interested in food.”
Around the third grade, her father visited
Massachusetts to attend a lecture about the
Framingham Heart Study, and how red meat can put
people at higher risk for heart disease and certain
types of cancer.
“Dr. Koh’s impact is clear: families
eating better, students entering
the workforce more prepared, and
communities being heard.”
Linda Koh
Assistant Professor, Elaine
Marieb College of Nursing
at UMass Amherst
“He came home from that presentation and said,
‘we’re going to be vegetarian.’ So overnight, we
stopped eating meat, and that was kind of traumatic
for me because I was like, ‘what are we going to live
on? I’m not used to this.’”
But Koh stuck with it, and when she got married,
she and her husband made the decision to go vegan,
and have stuck to a plant-based diet for the past 13
years.
“We’ve seen in our own lives how it’s impacted our
health. We used to have seasonal allergies, and we
don’t have those anymore, so if it works for us, I’m
sure it could be helpful for other people.”
So she speaks from experience in the work she does
today — as an educator shaping future nurses at the
Elaine Marieb College of Nursing at UMass Amherst,
as well as an emerging leader creating partnerships
around nutrition and sustainable food systems.
Take it from Crystal Neuhauser, chief Development
officer at the Marieb College, who nominated Koh as a
Healthcare Hero.
“Through her innovative research, collaborative
partnerships, and culturally grounded pedagogy, she
is reshaping the healthcare landscape in Western
Massachusetts — empowering individuals, training
future nurses, and building healthier, more equitable
communities,” Neuhauser wrote.
As noted above, Koh — like others in this year’s
H24
2025 << 2025 HEALTHCARE HEROES >>