Lesly-Marie Buer was living and working Colorado when she became interested in substance abuse treatment and harm reduction programs. Buer grew up in East Tennessee, in the Knoxville area, but moved west and attended the University of Colorado where she got a master’s in public health. “But then I was […]

This article was originally published by Ohio Valley ReSource. Isabella Back, 18, pulls her jacket tight around herself as she crosses the gravel driveway. “So we’re going about 10 feet from my house to my dad’s workshop,” she says, and pushes through a door in a big, red barn. The […]

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 […]

This article was originally published by the Ohio Valley ReSource. Toni Wilkinson has seven children, three of them under six, and all of them home-schooled. So her house on a Lexington, Kentucky, cul-de-sac is rarely quiet. Just inside the front door are bins filled with shoes, piles of jackets on […]

Healthy living begins in the home. Secure, affordable housing is critical to living long and well. That’s according to the recently released 2019 annual County Health Rankings, a collaboration of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute. Ranking the health of nearly every county in the […]

Grundy County, Tennessee, ranks near the bottom of the state in the County Health Rankings and Roadmaps. But that hasn’t stopped the small county from initiating a top-tier response to improving community health. In the new rankings released today, the county improves its position from a last-place 95th to 93rd. […]