.jpg "Melinda Ramage, FNP-BC, CARN-AP photo")
Medical Director
Project CARA, Mountain Area Health Education Center
Melinda Ramage is the Medical Director and Co-Founder of Project CARA (Care that Advocates Respect, Resilience, and Recovery for All). Project CARA provides comprehensive substance use treatment within a high-risk obstetrical care program at the Mountain Area Health Education Center (MAHEC). This program works with the direct support of a team of community partners that include comprehensive mental health, outreach programs, and hospital care services.
Project CARA has supported more than 800 patients with substance use disorders across 16 WNC counties since its founding in 2014. Program faculty provide direct education and training in perinatal substance use disorders to medical students; obstetrical, family medicine, and psychiatry residents; pharmacy students; nurse practitioner students; and other health sciences learners.
In addition to co-founding Project CARA, Ramage is passionate about patient-centered, perinatal substance use treatment research. She is a public speaker and clinical educator on perinatal substance use treatment, opioid use disorders, as well as prevention and awareness efforts here in Western North Carolina and across the state. A graduate of Purdue University, she started her nursing career as a psychiatric nurse in the U.S. Navy and went on to earn her master’s degree in nursing in Western Carolina University’s Family Nurse Practitioner Program.
