A Trump administration proposal calls for increasing Medicare reimbursements for some rural hospitals by taking money from hospitals in major urban areas. Both opponents and proponents of the measure say the entire Medicare reimbursement system needs an overhaul. While proposed changes to Medicare reimbursements to hospitals may keep some rural […]
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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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This article was originally published by Ohio Valley ReSource. Joe Oliver and Tony Brown peered into the dark crawl space beneath a Letcher County, Kentucky, home. Already, they could see problems. The crawl space had been blocked off with just a thin sheet of plywood; the posts supporting the house […]
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Kelly Scott was a natural choice to serve as advisor to The Empty Chair Project at Pikeville High School. The project, a mobile app and website that offers information and resources related to drug-addiction prevention, treatment and harm reduction, was created in 2017 by a team of students under Scott’s […]
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Understanding Appalachia requires coming to grips with the complexities and challenges of rural healthcare. It means understanding that addiction isn’t just an opioid issue, as methamphetamines make a comeback in our communities. It means understanding that health goals reflect a Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs chart from one community to the […]
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