Kristine Sande, MBA - Bio Sketch

Kristine Sande serves as an associate director at the Center for Rural Health (CRH) at the University of North Dakota (UND) School of Medicine & Health Sciences, in Grand Forks.

She has been with the Center since February 2002 and provides leadership to the Center's web-based information portals. Kristine has directed the federally-funded Rural Health Information Hub (RHIhub) since 2004 and the Center's TruServe initiative since 2012.

As the director of RHIhub, Kristine manages the development of the programs' products and services. She also acts as a liaison to the project partners, advisory boards, and stakeholder organizations, as well as the funding agency. She provides strategic leadership, speaks to national audiences, and ensures the integration, coordination, timing, and consistency of project activities, processes, and products.

RHIhub serves as a national rural health information portal that assists rural communities and other rural stakeholders in accessing available programs, funding, strategies, and research that can enable them to provide quality health services to rural residents.

She is also the program director for TruServe, a web-based tracking system CRH created and markets to nonprofit organizations.

Kristine directed the federally-funded Health Workforce Information Center (HWIC) from 2009 through 2014, when the project's funding ended. HWIC was a national comprehensive online library of publicly available health workforce information.

She currently serves on the National Rural Health Association's Board of Trustees as the chair of the Statewide Constituency Group. She has served on advisory boards of numerous rural health programs and initiatives over the years. She is the recipient of a 2010 University of North Dakota Meritorious Service Award.

Kristine previously served as the project coordinator for the North Dakota Medicare Rural Hospital Flexibility (Flex) Program at CRH. In that capacity, she provided technical assistance to North Dakota's rural hospitals. Prior to joining the Center, she was employed by Wright-Hennepin Cooperative Electric Association and Nodak Electric Cooperative.

Kristine was raised on a family farm outside of a North Dakota town of 1,200 people. She has a bachelor of business administration degree in economics and a master of business administration degree, both from UND.