FARMERSBURG, Ind. (WTWO/WAWV) — In an interview with Indiana State Health Commissioner, Dr. Kristina Box, the veteran healthcare professional discussed her background, her passion for her job, and her efforts to improve the overall health of Hoosiers.

While not a Terre Haute native, Box grew up in the city and attended school with the VCSC all throughout her childhood and teen years before attending Indiana University. When discussing where her passion for medicine and health began, Box referenced her 6th-grade health class.

“So we went through all the systems of cardiac and the respiratory and the skeletal systems and drew pictures and how the blood went through the heart, and wrote about each of them and it just totally turned me on and I knew from then on I wanted to be a physician and I really learned how to study and how to be independent in my studies when I was in high school at Terre Haute,” Box shared.

With an idea of what she wanted to work toward, Box has earned many achievements and awards throughout her career but noted that the most rewarding aspect was the work itself.

“I graduated with excellent grades from high school and from undergrad and got a lot of awards and accolades for that. But I really think that the ultimate reward and the most important reward to me was the ability to practice a profession that I absolutely loved every day of my life and have a career and something that I felt like I was really giving back and really enjoying doing.”

As Box continued throughout her career in medicine, she now works to implement preventative methods to help stop health issues before they start for people across the state.

“The legislation around our being able to establish a new and better infrastructure for public health across the state of Indiana also brought with it the funding that we needed to be able to fund that growth and that improvement of public health. That type of program and policies in place across the state to prevent chronic disease and to prevent injury and to prevent the spread of disease is what is going to overall over time improve the health of Hoosiers.”