Tag: Health

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

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, […]

Read More
During his about a year-and-a-half stay at Mildred Mitchell-Bateman Hospital in Huntington, Richard Rothermund gained 60 pounds and his health drastically declined. He died at age 40 on Dec. 17, 2021. Photos: Provided

For This W.Va. Family, Legislative Attention on ‘Warehousing’ People with Intellectual Disabilities at State Hospitals Is too Late

Richard Rothermund was healthy and generally happy before he was confined to Mildred Mitchell-Bateman Hospital in Huntington in 2020, according to Sue Rouse, his mother. There, Sue says, a lack of independence, separation from loved ones and the decline of joyful moments in his life led to the drastic deterioration […]

Read More
Brooke Parker (left), a care coordinator for the Ryan White HIV/AIDS program, is joined by Joe Solomon and Sarah Stone in Charleston, West Virginia. The program is a federal initiative that provides HIV-related services nationwide. Photo: John Raby/AP Photo

HIV Outbreak Persists as Officials Push Back Against Containment Efforts

Recovery from addiction is possible. For help, please call the free and confidential treatment referral hotline (1-800-662-HELP) or visit findtreatment.gov. Brooke Parker has spent the past two years combing riverside homeless encampments, abandoned houses, and less traveled roads to help contain a lingering HIV outbreak that has disproportionately affected those […]

Read More
Photo: Rudamese/Pixabay

Experts: Peer Recovery Is Valuable Yet Under Sourced Resource in Addiction Treatment

Recovery from addiction is possible. For help, please call the free and confidential treatment referral hotline (1-800-662-HELP) or visit findtreatment.gov. There is no simple roadmap to recovery from a substance use disorder; no fixed destination toward which to steer. Certainly, there are mile markers in recovery, and there are those […]

Read More
FindTreatment.gov is the federal website set up to help people search for and find addiction treatment options in their communities. Photo: Kristen Uppercue/100 Days in Appalachia

The Federal Website That’s Supposed to Help ‘Find Treatment’ Needs Work, Experts Say

Recovery from addiction is possible. For help, please call the free and confidential treatment referral hotline (1-800-662-HELP) or visit findtreatment.gov. Last year more than 100,000 people in the U.S. died from an overdose – the highest number ever recorded. More than a million Americans have lost their lives to overdose […]

Read More
From the 1870s through the 1920s, wagons loaded with roots and herbs like this one were a common sight at country stores and herb warehouses in Appalachia. Credit: Buncombe County Special Collections Library

Ginseng and Big Pharma: How Appalachia Built an Industry that Would Later Exploit It

More than a century before the likes of Purdue Pharma began flooding Appalachian communities with opioids and destroying lives, giant pharmaceutical companies had a very different relationship to the mountain region.   Indeed, years of research into business records and country store ledgers has revealed that Appalachian root diggers and herb […]

Read More