Angela Dearinger is justifiably worried about the prevalence of tobacco use in her state and region. Dearinger is Kentucky’s public health commissioner, and one in four adults in central Appalachia reports being a smoker. The national rate is 16.3 percent. In a study released this past spring, researchers from East […]
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Tommy Joyce is no cinephile. The last movie he saw in a theater was the remake of “True Grit” nearly a decade ago. “I’d rather watch squirrels run in the woods” than sit through most of what appears on the big screen, he said. But there’s a film that opened Dec. […]
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Appalachia is, and has been for decades, lagging behind the rest of the nation in a number of health outcomes. The region struggles with heart disease, diabetes, cancer and much more. But new research on the rate at which Appalachians are dying has health officials calling for more investments in […]
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When Vincent Pallotti was ordained a priest in 1818, he wrote, “I ask God to make me an untiring worker.” He set about to offer “food for the hungry…medicine and health for the sick.” Pallotti, who lived simply, in Rome, his entire life, worked in fellowship. He established schools and […]
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It’s an enduring fact: You’re more likely to die from cancer if you live in rural Appalachia than if you live anywhere else in this country. According to a 2016 University of Virginia study, between 1969 and 2011, the incidence of cancer declined in all regions of the U.S except […]
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Charles Glover doesn’t mince words when assessing Clarksburg, West Virginia, the town where he was raised and still lives today. “It’s not Clarksburg anymore,” Glover says. “It’s Methburg.” Methburg. As in methamphetamines, a drug that ravaged his community more than a decade ago and today is coming back just as […]
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