Author: Taylor Sisk, Photography by Stacy Kranitz

Every weekend, Ainsley Bryce, the executive director of Holler Harm Reduction, sets up a syringe exchange in the back parking lot of a Dollar General in western North Carolina, where people seek help across state lines. Photo: Stacy Kranitz/For 100 Days in Appalachia
Every weekend, Ainsley Bryce, the executive director of Holler Harm Reduction, sets up a syringe exchange in the back parking lot of a Dollar General in western North Carolina, where people seek help across state lines. Photo: Stacy Kranitz/For 100 Days in Appalachia

‘Harm Reduction Saves Lives’: Meet the Appalachians Doing the Work

by on March 30, 2023 Comments are Disabled

Recovery from addiction is possible. For help, please call the free and confidential treatment referral hotline (1-800-662-HELP) or visit findtreatment.gov. The numbers are now frighteningly familiar: More than a million Americans dead from a drug overdose in the past two decades. More than 100,000 of those deaths came in 2021, […]

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Alison Jeffers and Dallan Phillips work for Scott County Emergency Management Services. The local hospital, Big South Fork Medical Center, is severely underfunded and offers limited emergency services. Clara Terry is taken from the hospital to an air ambulance for a subdural hemorrhage. Photo: Stacey Kranitz/100 Days in Appalachia

Rural Tennessee is Losing More Hospitals Than Anywhere in the Country, But COVID-19 Isn’t Fully to Blame

by on July 15, 2021 Comments are Disabled

This is the third story in Critical Condition, a three part series. Read more here. “I’m hopin’,” Andrea Haas says with conviction. The Remote Area Medical clinic has come to Jellico, Tennessee, in Campbell County, on the Kentucky border. It’s offering free health care. Haas’s hope for today is that […]

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Dr. Teresa Tyson and the Health Wagon team have started to administer COVID-19 vaccines in this part of Appalachia by traveling door-to-door. Here, Tyson prepares to administer a vaccine to Marty Wells at his home in Norton, Virginia. Photo: Stacy Kranitz/100 Days in Appalachia

In Southwest Virginia, Reestablishing a Rural Hospital System Requires Rebuilding Trust

by on July 8, 2021 Comments are Disabled

This is the second story in Critical Condition, a three part series. Read more here. When the sun rises over the Cumberland Mountains of southwest Virginia in mid-spring, it’s hard to imagine all’s not well in this world. Saturated in mountain laurel and flowering dogwood, this is picture-postcard central Appalachia. […]

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A memorial service for nurse Donna Jean “Goody” Gooslin was attended by a large group of former hospital employees and their families. The service took place in the parking lot in front of the hospital, which overlooks downtown Williamson. As the sun set, the nurses gathered to release balloons and light candles in Gooslin’s honor. Photo: Stacy Kranitz/100 Days in Appalachia

‘This Isn’t a Dying Coal Town,’ It’s a West Virginia Community Rethinking Health Care and Succeeding

by on July 1, 2021 Comments are Disabled

This is the first story in Critical Condition, a three part series. Read more here. In his history of Williamson, West Virginia, Okey P. Keadle – a member of Williamson High School’s inaugural, 1918, graduating class – describes the fire of 1906 that destroyed some 20 downtown buildings. In the […]

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