In 1965, Charleston, West Virginia, was home to about 85,000 residents — now, that number has almost halved. The people who are left look a lot like the population in the rest of the state — namely white and older. And as they age, those older folks need someone to […]
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In Clay, West Virginia, downtown Main Street is maybe a half-mile long. Amid shuttered storefronts, the two most prominent stores are Family Dollar and the Dollar Tree. Like the rest of southern West Virginia, the opioid epidemic has hit Clay hard. “I would venture to guess that every single student […]
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If you ask state departments, “Are there standards of care that all facilities treating opioid-dependent pregnant women have to follow?” The short answer is, “No, there are not exact protocols on how to do that,” said Dr. Connie White, deputy commissioner for the Kentucky Department of Public Health. “Like anyone […]
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Two rural hospitals in Appalachia– one in Wheeling, West Virginia, the other just across the river in Ohio– announced they were closing in mid-August. Altogether, the closures will directly impact about 1,100 jobs. But, indirectly, it could affect the entire economy of the area. “What we found is when a […]
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Low-income Americans are dying at a higher rate than high-income Americans. In fact, the life span of low-income Americans is becoming shorter – a trend largely attributed to drug and alcohol-related deaths, which has been called deaths of despair. “The least well-off Americans have seen their wages become stagnant, their […]
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In one year, from 2017 to 2018, tobacco usage among American youth skyrocketed by almost 40 percent. The culprit? E-cigarettes. The trend reverses decades of public health efforts to combat tobacco consumption, which alarms people like Mercer County Commissioner Greg Puckett. At his office, Puckett pulls out a box filled with tobacco […]
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