Michelle Owens' new home in Jackson is loaded with the standard features of a typical Habitat house - one of at least 556 built since the founding of Habitat for Humanity/Metro Jackson in 1986.

But beyond the sparkling kitchen, neat bedrooms and freshly-painted porch, the house at 233 Englewood Street has room for this: teamwork among four major health-care rivals, including the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

It was three years of high cholesterol that started everything. Rod Simmons visited his family physician in 2009, and when the test results came back showing his numbers were up for the third year in a row, he got a chiding from the doctor.

“She sent me a letter and said, ‘I’ll give you three months to straighten it out,’” recalled Simmons, an LPN in the Family Medicine/Pediatrics & Allergy Clinic at Grant’s Ferry.

Having lost his father to heart disease in 2003, he took the ultimatum seriously.

“I got the letter on a Tuesday, and that Saturday I did my first 5K, just like that. No training, nothing. That was the Rush to Brush in February 2009.”