The Greene County Public Health Department has a new leader and she is one of Greene County’s own.

Shelby Cooklin is a native of Greene County and attended the East Greene School District, and graduated from Greene County High School in 2014. After Cooklin graduated from Des Moines Area Community College as a registered nurse in 2018, she went on to earn a bachelor’s of science in nursing degree from the University of Iowa in 2020. She also worked at Mary Greeley Medical Center during her DMACC and Iowa years, before deciding to be a traveling nurse where she went all over the state and parts of Wisconsin. 

Cooklin says she decided to change paths from a traveling nurse to public health because of the positive experience she had with Becky Wolf, who was the  Greene County Public Health Director and will be retiring at the end of this year. She has been the child and adolescent health coordinator for two years and was excited when she learned she was going to be the new director. She talks about why she wanted to take on this new position.

“In looking forward just in my personal career I wanted maybe more of a challenge, more growth. I just think that it’s really important to continue to offer these services to the people in the county that they’ve come to rely on these services that public health offers. And just going forward I wanted to make sure that those programs and those services are continued to be offered here at Greene County Public Health. 

Cooklin describes what she is most excited about as the new director.

“One of the things that I’m most excited for is just getting to work with my same group of co-workers that I have been working with in this new role. And then also just growing my leadership skills and my public health knowledge, and really becoming that trusted resource in the community that people come to when they need answers.”   

Cooklin will continue to be trained by Wolf as she takes over handling all grant applications for the department, along with employee management, budgeting and emergency preparedness among other responsibilities.