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  31. <title>New National Organization Advocates Mobile Healthcare as Key for Rural Areas</title>
  32. <link>https://dailyyonder.com/new-national-organization-advocates-mobile-healthcare-as-key-for-rural-areas/2025/03/24/</link>
  33. <comments>https://dailyyonder.com/new-national-organization-advocates-mobile-healthcare-as-key-for-rural-areas/2025/03/24/#respond</comments>
  35. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Liz Carey]]></dc:creator>
  36. <pubDate>Mon, 24 Mar 2025 10:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
  37. <category><![CDATA[Health]]></category>
  38. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://dailyyonder.com/?p=226894</guid>
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  40. <description><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="683" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/driving-health-forward.jpeg?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" fetchpriority="high" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/driving-health-forward.jpeg?w=2048&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/driving-health-forward.jpeg?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/driving-health-forward.jpeg?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/driving-health-forward.jpeg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/driving-health-forward.jpeg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/driving-health-forward.jpeg?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/driving-health-forward.jpeg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/driving-health-forward.jpeg?resize=1568%2C1045&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/driving-health-forward.jpeg?resize=2000%2C1333&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/driving-health-forward.jpeg?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/driving-health-forward.jpeg?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/driving-health-forward.jpeg?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure>
  41. <p>According to a new advocacy group, the key to getting healthcare to rural communities may be to bring mobile health clinics to them instead of asking patients to travel long distances to healthcare facilities. Driving Health Forward brings together a wide base of stakeholders – from schools and mobile health clinic operators to healthcare companies [&#8230;]</p>
  42. <p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/new-national-organization-advocates-mobile-healthcare-as-key-for-rural-areas/2025/03/24/">New National Organization Advocates Mobile Healthcare as Key for Rural Areas</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  43. ]]></description>
  44. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="683" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/driving-health-forward.jpeg?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/driving-health-forward.jpeg?w=2048&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/driving-health-forward.jpeg?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/driving-health-forward.jpeg?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/driving-health-forward.jpeg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/driving-health-forward.jpeg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/driving-health-forward.jpeg?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/driving-health-forward.jpeg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/driving-health-forward.jpeg?resize=1568%2C1045&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/driving-health-forward.jpeg?resize=2000%2C1333&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/driving-health-forward.jpeg?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/driving-health-forward.jpeg?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/driving-health-forward.jpeg?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure><p>According to a new advocacy group, the key to getting healthcare to rural communities may be to bring mobile health clinics to them instead of asking patients to travel long distances to healthcare facilities.</p><p><a href="https://www.drivinghealthforward.org/">Driving Health Forward</a> brings together a wide base of stakeholders – from schools and mobile health clinic operators to healthcare companies and vehicle manufacturers – that can provide patients in rural communities the care that they need.</p><p>“The healthcare industry has a distribution problem,” said Dr. Nancy E. Oriol, Harvard Medical School’s associate dean for community engagement in medical education.&nbsp;</p><p>“Mobile health clinics are a critically needed bridge between communities, brick and mortar clinics and even telehealth operations in order to deliver healthcare to everyone. Driving Health Forward is bringing the right people together for a viable, long-term solution.”</p><p>The base of the group, some 80 people, met in February to work out the initial steps needed to move the campaign forward. The group hopes to advance policy initiatives, best practices and partnerships in order to provide more access to health care, create more investment in mobile health clinics and find an achievable path to financial stability for mobile health clinics providing services to rural communities.</p><p>Supported by the Leon Lowenstein Foundation, a Connecticut-based family foundation, the idea of the group grew out of the mobile health initiatives started during the Covid-19 pandemic. The group included rural health providers, such as Dr. Phillip Levy, as well as representatives from the American Cancer Society, the Mobile Healthcare Association, the Mobile Health Initiative from the University of Minnesota, Mobile Specialty Vehicles and Medpod, a technology company that provides healthcare providers with proprietary telediagnostic equipment</p><p>“The Leon Lowenstein Foundation has been supporting the general concept of mobile health care and initially was supporting the build out of some programs and trying to advance the general concept,” said Levy, professor of emergency medicine at Wayne State University, in an interview with the Daily Yonder. “As things accelerated during the pandemic with place-based service delivery …It sort of pushed the agenda forward. The Lowenstein Foundation stepped back a little bit and started to really ask what’s our best role here?”</p><p>Now, as financial structures for providing mobile healthcare change, and rural healthcare clinics and hospitals closures leave some in rural communities with hours-long drives to get healthcare, the new campaign hopes to marry rural healthcare needs with mobile solutions.</p><p>Rural residents face barriers to accessing healthcare, the group reported in its case study. Morbidity and mortality rates remain high in rural areas when compared to urban areas, the group found, and the current healthcare infrastructure can’t meet the current demand for essential care. <a href="https://www.aha.org/2022-09-07-rural-hospital-closures-threaten-access">Between 2010 and 2021, 136 rural hospitals closed</a>, according to the American Hospital Association. <a href="https://chqpr.org/">More than 700 rural hospitals are at risk of closing</a>, a report from the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform found in August 2024.</p><p>Levy said the Driving Health Forward group, as it is starting out, will work to determine how best to provide the services rural communities need by assessing what gaps mobile health clinics can bridge in rural communities.</p><p>“Mobile care is really a platform to bring services to communities where there may be barriers to accessing services,” Levy said. “If you take mobile care into rural environments, is it screening for things like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, high cholesterol, and obesity and bringing resources to support that? Or is it actual care provision because you don&#8217;t have cardiovascular disease specialists or what have you? So… we need to be able to know what the key features of this are that need to be advocated for and supported to grow this movement.”</p><p>That could range from funding to support the startup and building of the clinics based on what communities say they need, or helping to move policy forward that would create a sustainable revenue stream to keep them open and operating, he said.</p><p>For now though, the organization is looking for more people to be a part of determining where Driving Health Forward goes from here.</p><p>“The important thing is to get people who want to be involved in Driving Health Forward and get organizations who are willing to formulate committees and be part of the different components of an agenda around the organization,” he said. “What came out of the meeting was… what are the pillars of what we want to see happen for mobile care and how do we make sure that they&#8217;re inclusive and represent all different perspectives? Going forward it&#8217;ll be a further refining of the big tent agenda.”</p><p>More information about Driving Health Forward can be found on the organization’s <a href="https://www.drivinghealthforward.org/copy-of-about-driving-health-forward">website</a>.&nbsp;</p><hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-dots"/><p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/new-national-organization-advocates-mobile-healthcare-as-key-for-rural-areas/2025/03/24/">New National Organization Advocates Mobile Healthcare as Key for Rural Areas</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
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  53. <title>Inside the Schools Alaska Ignored</title>
  54. <link>https://dailyyonder.com/inside-the-schools-alaska-ignored/2025/03/24/</link>
  55. <comments>https://dailyyonder.com/inside-the-schools-alaska-ignored/2025/03/24/#respond</comments>
  57. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Taylor Kate Brown / ProPublica]]></dc:creator>
  58. <pubDate>Mon, 24 Mar 2025 09:59:00 +0000</pubDate>
  59. <category><![CDATA[Education]]></category>
  60. <category><![CDATA[repub]]></category>
  61. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://dailyyonder.com/?p=227068</guid>
  62.  
  63. <description><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="682" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0224_Schwing_-7-PDedit_maxWidth_3000_maxHeight_3000_ppi_72_quality_95_embedColorProfile_true.webp?fit=1024%2C682&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0224_Schwing_-7-PDedit_maxWidth_3000_maxHeight_3000_ppi_72_quality_95_embedColorProfile_true.webp?w=2000&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0224_Schwing_-7-PDedit_maxWidth_3000_maxHeight_3000_ppi_72_quality_95_embedColorProfile_true.webp?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0224_Schwing_-7-PDedit_maxWidth_3000_maxHeight_3000_ppi_72_quality_95_embedColorProfile_true.webp?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0224_Schwing_-7-PDedit_maxWidth_3000_maxHeight_3000_ppi_72_quality_95_embedColorProfile_true.webp?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0224_Schwing_-7-PDedit_maxWidth_3000_maxHeight_3000_ppi_72_quality_95_embedColorProfile_true.webp?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0224_Schwing_-7-PDedit_maxWidth_3000_maxHeight_3000_ppi_72_quality_95_embedColorProfile_true.webp?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0224_Schwing_-7-PDedit_maxWidth_3000_maxHeight_3000_ppi_72_quality_95_embedColorProfile_true.webp?resize=1024%2C682&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0224_Schwing_-7-PDedit_maxWidth_3000_maxHeight_3000_ppi_72_quality_95_embedColorProfile_true.webp?resize=1568%2C1045&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0224_Schwing_-7-PDedit_maxWidth_3000_maxHeight_3000_ppi_72_quality_95_embedColorProfile_true.webp?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0224_Schwing_-7-PDedit_maxWidth_3000_maxHeight_3000_ppi_72_quality_95_embedColorProfile_true.webp?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0224_Schwing_-7-PDedit_maxWidth_3000_maxHeight_3000_ppi_72_quality_95_embedColorProfile_true.webp?fit=1024%2C682&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure>
  64. <p>This story was originally published by ProPublica. Two inches of raw sewage. Persistent chemical leaks. Pipes insulated with asbestos. A bat infestation. Black mold. “It kind of blows my mind some of the things I found in public schools,” says Emily Schwing, a KYUK reporter and ProPublica Local Reporting Network partner. Recently, we published her [&#8230;]</p>
  65. <p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/inside-the-schools-alaska-ignored/2025/03/24/">Inside the Schools Alaska Ignored</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  66. ]]></description>
  67. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="682" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0224_Schwing_-7-PDedit_maxWidth_3000_maxHeight_3000_ppi_72_quality_95_embedColorProfile_true.webp?fit=1024%2C682&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0224_Schwing_-7-PDedit_maxWidth_3000_maxHeight_3000_ppi_72_quality_95_embedColorProfile_true.webp?w=2000&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0224_Schwing_-7-PDedit_maxWidth_3000_maxHeight_3000_ppi_72_quality_95_embedColorProfile_true.webp?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0224_Schwing_-7-PDedit_maxWidth_3000_maxHeight_3000_ppi_72_quality_95_embedColorProfile_true.webp?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0224_Schwing_-7-PDedit_maxWidth_3000_maxHeight_3000_ppi_72_quality_95_embedColorProfile_true.webp?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0224_Schwing_-7-PDedit_maxWidth_3000_maxHeight_3000_ppi_72_quality_95_embedColorProfile_true.webp?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0224_Schwing_-7-PDedit_maxWidth_3000_maxHeight_3000_ppi_72_quality_95_embedColorProfile_true.webp?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0224_Schwing_-7-PDedit_maxWidth_3000_maxHeight_3000_ppi_72_quality_95_embedColorProfile_true.webp?resize=1024%2C682&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0224_Schwing_-7-PDedit_maxWidth_3000_maxHeight_3000_ppi_72_quality_95_embedColorProfile_true.webp?resize=1568%2C1045&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0224_Schwing_-7-PDedit_maxWidth_3000_maxHeight_3000_ppi_72_quality_95_embedColorProfile_true.webp?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0224_Schwing_-7-PDedit_maxWidth_3000_maxHeight_3000_ppi_72_quality_95_embedColorProfile_true.webp?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0224_Schwing_-7-PDedit_maxWidth_3000_maxHeight_3000_ppi_72_quality_95_embedColorProfile_true.webp?fit=1024%2C682&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure><p class="has-text-align-center"><em>This story was originally published by <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/alaska-deterioriating-public-schools-reporting">ProPublica</a>.</em></p><p>Two inches of raw sewage. Persistent chemical leaks. Pipes insulated with asbestos. A bat infestation. Black mold. “It kind of blows my mind some of the things I found in public schools,” says Emily Schwing, a KYUK reporter and ProPublica <a href="https://www.propublica.org/local-reporting-network">Local Reporting Network</a> partner. Recently, we published her investigation of <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/rural-alaska-crumbling-schools-state-funding">dangerous conditions in deteriorating public schools</a> in Alaska’s rural villages. Schwing, who reported this story while also participating in the University of Southern California, Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s National Fellowship, spoke to dozens of sources, including local resident Taylor Hayden, who showed her concrete footings that had been reduced to rubble in one village school.</p><p>ProPublica has previously reported on <a href="https://www.propublica.org/series/state-of-disrepair">how restrictive funding policies in Idaho</a> have contributed to similarly dangerous school conditions.</p><p>In Alaska, a unique set of circumstances means the responsibility for school repairs in many rural villages rests exclusively on the state Legislature. Yet over the past 25 years, state officials have largely ignored hundreds of requests by rural school districts to fix the problems that have left public schools across Alaska crumbling, even though the state owns these buildings. As rural school districts wait for funding, the buildings continue to deteriorate, posing public health and safety risks to students, teachers and staff. The impact is felt most by Alaska Natives.</p><p>For Schwing, the “record scratch” moment came when she realized some school districts were spending their own money, in one case $200,000, in a desperate effort to rank higher up the funding priority list, even going as far as hiring a lobbyist. Other districts told her they couldn’t do so without cutting teaching positions.</p><p>“Why are public school districts paying a lobbyist to convince lawmakers to invest in public schools, and even more so, to invest in infrastructure that the state owns?” she thought.</p><p>I called up Schwing to talk about the process of reporting this investigation and how different going to school can be for students across Alaska. Our conversation has been condensed and edited.</p><h3 class="wp-block-heading">What got you interested in this story?</h3><p>I travel a lot to rural communities in Alaska, just by virtue of the things that I cover. And usually when you are traveling to villages, you stay in the school. I have always been surprised by the things that I’ve experienced there. On the Chukchi coast, there’s a school where you can’t see out the windows anymore because they’re so pitted from the wind. There was a school that I was in last year during a <a href="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.kyuk.org/kuskokwim-300/2024-01-27/akiachak-musher-john-snyder-scratches-from-the-2024-k300&amp;sa=D&amp;source=docs&amp;ust=1741298903463071&amp;usg=AOvVaw27uOfXqwPlidkQv3IjVpeW">sled dog race</a> that I was covering where I could <em>smell</em> the bathrooms from down the hall. That’s not normal. So I was keeping a list of things that were strange for public schools.</p><p>Then Taylor Hayden called me and told me what’s going on at the Sleetmute school. So I went out there. He showed me [the conditions] in the wood shop. And then we went under the building and I thought: “Oh my God. This is crazy.” It took off from there.</p><h3 class="wp-block-heading">How does seeing that black mold and guano in person change the story for you?</h3><p>I want to tell you about these two little kids I met, Edward and Loretta [in Sleetmute]. They’re in fourth grade. I’m in their school, and they’re giving me a tour: “This is our library, and this is our piano in the kindergarten room, and this is my favorite book.” They’re showing me their artwork. Never once did these kids say, “This is where the moldy part of our school is.” It made me sad to think that they think that this is normal for their school, but it also made me so proud of them for just being fourth-grade kids.</p><p>You can throw out numbers and statistics and do an investigation into these state records, but until you’re in the building, I don’t think the reality of how awful things are hits you. The kids are doing their homework at the lunch tables, or the high school kids are doing some really cool science projects, but they’re sitting in a school where if the wood shop collapses, it also takes the water system, the heat system, the HVAC, like all of the critical infrastructure, the electricity that keeps that school usable.</p><h3 class="wp-block-heading">What does a school mean to a place like Sleetmute?</h3><p>I have visited over 45 villages off the road system in Alaska at this point in my career, and the school is the center of these communities. It’s the largest building. They’re one of two buildings with a guarantee that there will be running water. They’re places where people get together, where people socialize. They have pickup basketball nights and fundraisers.</p><p>Public schools in rural Alaska also serve an emergency management function that is often overlooked. If there is some sort of natural disaster — a flood, a giant storm, a severe drop in temperature — or if there’s some sort of other piece of critical infrastructure that’s having problems — the water plant burns down or the electricity goes out or the heating fuel doesn’t get delivered — people will go seek shelter in the school. Wildland firefighters and the National Guard will be based out of these buildings if they’re responding to a disaster.</p><p>But in order for it to be an effective emergency management tool, you have to have it safe and operational. There are so many more functions that the public school serves than just school.</p><h3 class="wp-block-heading">Why do you think there’s such little urgency around these repairs?</h3><p>There’s so much conversation around operational funding, to pay for textbooks and teacher salaries. Currently in our Legislature, it’s all the lawmakers can talk about.</p><p>The people who are offering testimony to lawmakers from urban areas are all about funding curriculum and keeping teachers. Then you hear public testimony from people in rural communities who can’t even get that far, because there are pots and pans on the floor to catch the leaks from the roof, or there’s a bucket of oil next to them in their classroom and there’s one in the hall. There’s a very clear boundary between what rural constituents are experiencing and what urban constituents are experiencing with respect to education.</p><p>It’s very easy to forget the hundreds of villages that exist in Alaska off the road system, because they are so small. That’s where the real problem lies — when you don’t notice, then you have a roof that leaks for 20 years, and then it turns into a real public health and safety crisis.</p><h3 class="wp-block-heading">This story was translated to the Central Yup’ik dialect of Yugtun. Why was that important?</h3><p>There are over 50 villages on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta that KYUK serves. It’s the predominant dialect spoken on the delta, and there are a lot of elders who speak Yup’ik as their first language. The vast majority of KYUK’s audience is Yup’ik.</p><p>The other thing that you’ll notice in this story is the vast majority of the population that is served by rural public schools are Indigenous. So the largest impact from a lack of investment in school infrastructure is on Alaska Natives. So I think it’s really important to the most affected people that we would deliver <a href="https://www.kyuk.org/public-safety/2025-03-04/alaska-q-nallunguarilartuq-amllernek-ikayungcautnek-kitugutkaitnun-kaimengelriit-elitnaurviit">a story like this in their Indigenous and often first language</a>.</p><p><em>This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with KYUK and NPR’s Station Investigations Team, which supports local investigative journalism.</em></p><p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/inside-the-schools-alaska-ignored/2025/03/24/">Inside the Schools Alaska Ignored</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  68. ]]></content:encoded>
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  71. <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
  74. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">227068</post-id> </item>
  75. <item>
  76. <title>Using Art to Bridge the Rural-Urban Divide</title>
  77. <link>https://dailyyonder.com/using-art-to-bridge-the-rural-urban-divide/2025/03/21/</link>
  78. <comments>https://dailyyonder.com/using-art-to-bridge-the-rural-urban-divide/2025/03/21/#respond</comments>
  80. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Anya Petrone Slepyan]]></dc:creator>
  81. <pubDate>Fri, 21 Mar 2025 10:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
  82. <category><![CDATA[Arts & Culture]]></category>
  83. <category><![CDATA[Yonder Report]]></category>
  84. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://dailyyonder.com/?p=226272</guid>
  85.  
  86. <description><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="768" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts3.jpeg?fit=1024%2C768&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts3.jpeg?w=1080&amp;ssl=1 1080w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts3.jpeg?resize=760%2C570&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts3.jpeg?resize=768%2C576&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts3.jpeg?resize=800%2C600&amp;ssl=1 800w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts3.jpeg?resize=600%2C450&amp;ssl=1 600w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts3.jpeg?resize=400%2C300&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts3.jpeg?resize=200%2C150&amp;ssl=1 200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts3.jpeg?resize=1024%2C768&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts3.jpeg?resize=706%2C530&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts3.jpeg?fit=1024%2C768&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure>
  87. <p>As the 2024 election approached, news channels and commentators once again revived a familiar narrative: the urban-rural divide.&#160; But Laura Zabel, executive director of Minnesota-based arts non-profit Springboard for the Arts, was more interested in urban-rural solidarity.&#160; “Going into an election year, we knew that there was going to be a lot of narrative that [&#8230;]</p>
  88. <p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/using-art-to-bridge-the-rural-urban-divide/2025/03/21/">Using Art to Bridge the Rural-Urban Divide</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  89. ]]></description>
  90. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="768" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts3.jpeg?fit=1024%2C768&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts3.jpeg?w=1080&amp;ssl=1 1080w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts3.jpeg?resize=760%2C570&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts3.jpeg?resize=768%2C576&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts3.jpeg?resize=800%2C600&amp;ssl=1 800w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts3.jpeg?resize=600%2C450&amp;ssl=1 600w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts3.jpeg?resize=400%2C300&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts3.jpeg?resize=200%2C150&amp;ssl=1 200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts3.jpeg?resize=1024%2C768&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts3.jpeg?resize=706%2C530&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts3.jpeg?fit=1024%2C768&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure><p>As the 2024 election approached, news channels and commentators once again revived a familiar narrative: the urban-rural divide.&nbsp;</p><p>But Laura Zabel, executive director of Minnesota-based arts non-profit <a href="https://springboardforthearts.org/">Springboard for the Arts</a>, was more interested in urban-rural solidarity.&nbsp;</p><p>“Going into an election year, we knew that there was going to be a lot of narrative that focused on ways we might be different, or ways that people assume we’re different,” Zabel said. “And we wanted to do something to not only counter that narrative, but to help people build real relationships and real solidarity across urban and rural places.”&nbsp;</p><p>Stoking resentment between urban and rural communities serves to divide largely working-class constituencies that could gain more political power if they work together, Zabel said. Emphasizing what these communities have in common, across different geographies and demographics, can help counter that divide. But it’s not easy to overcome a narrative that is so deeply ingrained that many Americans take it for granted.</p><p>So Springboard for the Arts launched a <a href="https://springboardforthearts.org/rural-urban-solidarity/">new initiative</a>, consisting of over 35 artists working on projects across Minnesota, Michigan, Kentucky, and Colorado that connect urban and rural communities. The installations include phone booths that connect communities in rural Northfield, Minnesota and Minneapolis, a culinary project that celebrates the fusion of a chef’s Southeast Asian roots and rural midwestern upbringing, and a Kentucky poetry slam honoring the renowned theorist and professor bell hooks.</p><figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" width="780" height="520" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts5.jpeg?resize=780%2C520&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-226276" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts5-scaled.jpeg?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts5-scaled.jpeg?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts5-scaled.jpeg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts5-scaled.jpeg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts5-scaled.jpeg?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts5-scaled.jpeg?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts5-scaled.jpeg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts5-scaled.jpeg?resize=1568%2C1045&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts5-scaled.jpeg?resize=2000%2C1333&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts5-scaled.jpeg?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts5-scaled.jpeg?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts5-scaled.jpeg?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts5-1296x864.jpeg?w=370&amp;ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption"><strong>Artists Drew Arrieta and Maddy Barsch created cozy phone booths that connected the communities of Minneapolis and Northfield, Minnesota. (Photo by Drew Arrieta)</strong></figcaption></figure><p>The results, Zabel said, demonstrate “all of the different ways that we’re connected, and all of the different creative ways that we might reach out to one another and build that kind of understanding.”&nbsp;</p><p>Using art projects to foster connection and understanding is effective, according to Zabel, because they leave room for nuance and complexity that is often flattened by media narratives.&nbsp; Creative projects can also help people approach new ideas with a more open mind, she said.&nbsp;</p><p>“Art has a tremendous ability to build shared experience in ways that takes people outside of their comfort zone, or makes people more open to thinking of things in a different way,” Zabel said.</p><p>A project installed in two Minnesota elementary schools demonstrates the principles behind the projects. Artist David Hamlow worked with 2nd and 3rd graders in rural St. James and urban Minneapolis to design wall sculptures made of recycled materials. Each student was also given a yearbook photo of a participating student from the other school, and asked to incorporate that picture into the sculpture. The resulting walls of faces serve a purpose similar to pen pals, according to Zabel.</p><figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" width="780" height="585" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts1.jpeg?resize=780%2C585&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-226277" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts1.jpeg?w=1080&amp;ssl=1 1080w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts1.jpeg?resize=760%2C570&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts1.jpeg?resize=768%2C576&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts1.jpeg?resize=800%2C600&amp;ssl=1 800w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts1.jpeg?resize=600%2C450&amp;ssl=1 600w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts1.jpeg?resize=400%2C300&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts1.jpeg?resize=200%2C150&amp;ssl=1 200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts1.jpeg?resize=1024%2C768&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts1.jpeg?resize=706%2C530&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/arts1.jpeg?w=370&amp;ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption"><strong>Each student was given a class portrait of their counterpart at a different school, and asked to decorate the picture with recycled materials. (Photo by David Hamlow)</strong></figcaption></figure><p>“The goal of this whole project in a nutshell is to just get people thinking about one another as individuals and as people who are living full lives and having similar experiences and to help people be more curious about what those lives might be like,” Zabel said.</p><p>The youth-focused project also hopes to reach urban and rural children before they’ve internalized the harmful stereotypes these communities can apply to one another.&nbsp;</p><p>Project installations by the initial class of 35 artists are ongoing, but Zabel hopes to expand the initiative further in coming years.</p><p>“I think that if we are able to build greater understanding and connection, and help people see a more complete picture of what it looks like to live in different contexts, we end up finding out that there is a lot of shared interest and shared hope for our future and our children,” Zabel said.</p><p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/using-art-to-bridge-the-rural-urban-divide/2025/03/21/">Using Art to Bridge the Rural-Urban Divide</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  91. ]]></content:encoded>
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  94. <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
  97. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">226272</post-id> </item>
  98. <item>
  99. <title>Q&#038;A: What Can a Russian Orthodox Community Tell Us about Rural America?</title>
  100. <link>https://dailyyonder.com/qa-what-can-a-russian-orthodox-community-tell-us-about-rural-america/2025/03/21/</link>
  101. <comments>https://dailyyonder.com/qa-what-can-a-russian-orthodox-community-tell-us-about-rural-america/2025/03/21/#respond</comments>
  103. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Christiana Wayne]]></dc:creator>
  104. <pubDate>Fri, 21 Mar 2025 09:59:00 +0000</pubDate>
  105. <category><![CDATA[Religion & Faith]]></category>
  106. <category><![CDATA[Path Finders]]></category>
  107. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://dailyyonder.com/?p=227091</guid>
  108.  
  109. <description><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="576" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Sarah-Riccardi-Swartz.jpg?fit=1024%2C576&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Sarah-Riccardi-Swartz.jpg?w=1920&amp;ssl=1 1920w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Sarah-Riccardi-Swartz.jpg?resize=760%2C428&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Sarah-Riccardi-Swartz.jpg?resize=1296%2C729&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Sarah-Riccardi-Swartz.jpg?resize=768%2C432&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Sarah-Riccardi-Swartz.jpg?resize=1536%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Sarah-Riccardi-Swartz.jpg?resize=1200%2C675&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Sarah-Riccardi-Swartz.jpg?resize=1024%2C576&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Sarah-Riccardi-Swartz.jpg?resize=1568%2C882&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Sarah-Riccardi-Swartz.jpg?resize=400%2C225&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Sarah-Riccardi-Swartz.jpg?resize=706%2C397&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Sarah-Riccardi-Swartz.jpg?fit=1024%2C576&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure>
  110. <p>Editor’s Note: This interview first appeared in Path Finders, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each week, Path Finders features a Q&#38;A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Like what you see here? You can join the mailing list at the bottom of this article and receive more conversations like this in your inbox each week. [&#8230;]</p>
  111. <p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/qa-what-can-a-russian-orthodox-community-tell-us-about-rural-america/2025/03/21/">Q&amp;A: What Can a Russian Orthodox Community Tell Us about Rural America?</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  112. ]]></description>
  113. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="576" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Sarah-Riccardi-Swartz.jpg?fit=1024%2C576&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Sarah-Riccardi-Swartz.jpg?w=1920&amp;ssl=1 1920w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Sarah-Riccardi-Swartz.jpg?resize=760%2C428&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Sarah-Riccardi-Swartz.jpg?resize=1296%2C729&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Sarah-Riccardi-Swartz.jpg?resize=768%2C432&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Sarah-Riccardi-Swartz.jpg?resize=1536%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Sarah-Riccardi-Swartz.jpg?resize=1200%2C675&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Sarah-Riccardi-Swartz.jpg?resize=1024%2C576&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Sarah-Riccardi-Swartz.jpg?resize=1568%2C882&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Sarah-Riccardi-Swartz.jpg?resize=400%2C225&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Sarah-Riccardi-Swartz.jpg?resize=706%2C397&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Sarah-Riccardi-Swartz.jpg?fit=1024%2C576&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure><p><em>Editor’s Note: This interview first appeared in <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/path-finders/">Path Finders</a>, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each week, Path Finders features a Q&amp;A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Like what you see here? You can <a href="#signup">join the mailing list at the bottom of this article</a> and receive more conversations like this in your inbox each week.</em></p><hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/><p>Dr. Sarah Riccardi-Swartz, a professor of religion and anthropology at Northeastern University, spent a year living with a community of Russian Orthodox monks and laypeople, nestled in a small West Virginia mountain town. What she found there was a portrait of rural religious life far different than the often-caricatured ‘white clapboard church’ of Trump-tinged Protestantism. The reality is, as always, much stranger. She documented her findings in her book&nbsp;<em><a href="https://www.fordhampress.com/9780823299515/between-heaven-and-russia/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Between Heaven and Russia: Religious Conversion and Political Apostasy in Appalachia</a></em>.</p><hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/><p class="has-text-align-center"><em>This interview has been edited for length and clarity.</em></p><p><strong>Christiana Wayne, The Daily Yonder:</strong> <strong>Could you broadly describe the political and religious character of this West Virginia Russian Orthodox community?</strong></p><div class="wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-1 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex"><div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow"><p><strong>Sarah Riccardi-Swartz:</strong> When I went to visit for the first time, I was really fascinated by two things. First, the community is comprised of a men&#8217;s monastery. A few miles down the road, there&#8217;s a church that was created to support people who wanted to move to the area to be close to this men&#8217;s monastery. And I was really struck by the fact that, in a place where largely Orthodoxy is an immigrant faith – Russian and Ukrainian coal miners in Appalachia and in the Rust Belt region – what we have in this community is white American converts who come from faith communities that are more closely associated with Appalachia like Evangelical Pentecostal, various types of Protestants. And they&#8217;ve all found a new home in the Russian Orthodox Church.</p></div>
  114.  
  115. <div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow"><figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" width="750" height="1000" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Headshot-on-stairs-BWJPG-1-scaled-750x1000-c-default.jpg?resize=750%2C1000&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-227012" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Headshot-on-stairs-BWJPG-1-scaled-750x1000-c-default.jpg?w=750&amp;ssl=1 750w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Headshot-on-stairs-BWJPG-1-scaled-750x1000-c-default.jpg?resize=570%2C760&amp;ssl=1 570w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Headshot-on-stairs-BWJPG-1-scaled-750x1000-c-default.jpg?resize=600%2C800&amp;ssl=1 600w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Headshot-on-stairs-BWJPG-1-scaled-750x1000-c-default.jpg?resize=450%2C600&amp;ssl=1 450w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Headshot-on-stairs-BWJPG-1-scaled-750x1000-c-default.jpg?resize=300%2C400&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Headshot-on-stairs-BWJPG-1-scaled-750x1000-c-default.jpg?resize=150%2C200&amp;ssl=1 150w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Headshot-on-stairs-BWJPG-1-scaled-750x1000-c-default.jpg?resize=400%2C533&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Headshot-on-stairs-BWJPG-1-scaled-750x1000-c-default.jpg?resize=706%2C941&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Headshot-on-stairs-BWJPG-1-scaled-750x1000-c-default.jpg?w=370&amp;ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Sarah Riccardi-Swartz is an assistant professor of religion and anthropology at Northeastern University. (Photo via Northeastern University College of Social Sciences and Humanities.)
  116. </figcaption></figure></div></div><p>When I came back to the community, it was about nine months after Trump was inaugurated [in 2017], I found a community that was largely the same as the community I had visited over and over, but they were also really concerned about global geopolitics. When I started the process of interviewing them, they were really keen on talking to me about the importance of Russia in saving the United States from itself. And so I spent a year living with this community, and what I found was ultimately a right-wing community of people who converted to Russian Orthodoxy because they believed that it was a more authentic form of Christianity, but also because they found within Russian politics something that they thought was missing from the American political system. That’s what the book is about, their experiences of converting and what they find meaningful about being Orthodox and particularly being Russian Orthodox.</p><p><strong>DY: Many political pundits talk about religious people in kind of purely political terms. What do you think that sort of narrative misses about actual belief and the metaphysics of these people, especially the community you lived with?</strong></p><p><strong>SRS:</strong> That&#8217;s a really great question. I have seen both in reporting and among social scientists whose work focuses on right wing or far right communities, an interesting journey around the religious lives of people. What I mean by that is they often will talk about their political subjectivities, but they&#8217;re not so much interested in their moral or ethical frameworks for how they got to those political subjectivities. It actually does a disservice to understanding the political patchwork of our nation because politics is an extension of one&#8217;s own place in the world and how a person views the world from where they stand.</p><p>When someone has a particular religious bent, that affects how they view everything from politics to science to legislation at the local level and even geopolitics … and I think that&#8217;s what I try to do with the book on a grassroots level: show folks how important esoteric religious ideas are to the larger political conversation people are having with each other.</p><p><strong>DY: Is there anything that these Russian Orthodox members see as essentially rural Appalachian about their religious practice?</strong></p><p><strong>SRS:</strong> The parish had started a yearly event that was focused on something called Old Christmas. And your readers in Appalachia will remember that Old Christmas has been a tradition in Appalachia for a long time, having Christmas in January. But for Orthodox interlocutors, it is aligned with something called the Old Calendar in the Orthodox Church, which is a calendar that does not line up with the calendar that we use in the West. They would often take things that they found within Appalachia and try to, for lack of a better term, make them orthodox. The congregants said that, because West Virginia has such economically depressed areas and it doesn&#8217;t have a lot of development in high-speed internet or infrastructure in small towns, they actually saw that as a benefit to them because it allowed for them to get back to a more rural simplistic way of life. And it neared, for them, what folks would do historically in Russia, which is to go live near a monastery out in the Russian countryside. Being in a rural, very isolated area actually was critical, not only for the monks, but also for the people at the parish nearby, because they believed they were sort of cut off from the ill effects of modernity in the United States.</p><p><strong>DY:</strong> <strong>Rural voters are portrayed as almost entirely nationalist and populist, but members of this Orthodox community, though right-wing, were Russian exceptionalist and monarchist. What does this community have to say about the state of things on the right and the state of things in rural America that&#8217;s so shallowly understood?</strong></p><p><strong>SRS:</strong> I teach a class on the anthropology of rural America. We really take the time to think about the flourishing of LGBTQ+ life in Appalachia, and we take time to think about the Appalachian movement. We talk a lot about the different political and economic conditions that shape communities. And one of the things I try to get my students to think about really seriously is that all of these preconceived understandings that we have of rural America, it&#8217;s not really rural America.</p><div class="wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-2 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex"><div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow"><figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" width="780" height="1170" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/book-cover.jpg?resize=780%2C1170&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-227011" style="width:379px;height:auto" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/book-cover-scaled.jpg?resize=864%2C1296&amp;ssl=1 864w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/book-cover-scaled.jpg?resize=507%2C760&amp;ssl=1 507w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/book-cover-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C1152&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/book-cover-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C1536&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/book-cover-scaled.jpg?resize=1365%2C2048&amp;ssl=1 1365w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/book-cover-scaled.jpg?resize=1200%2C1800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/book-cover-scaled.jpg?resize=683%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 683w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/book-cover-scaled.jpg?resize=1568%2C2352&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/book-cover-scaled.jpg?resize=400%2C600&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/book-cover-scaled.jpg?resize=706%2C1059&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/book-cover-scaled.jpg?w=1707&amp;ssl=1 1707w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/book-cover-864x1296.jpg?w=370&amp;ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Between Heaven and Russia: Religious Conversion and Political Apostasy in Appalachia was published on April 5, 2022. (Image: Fordham University Press)
  117. </figcaption></figure></div>
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  119. <div class="wp-block-column is-vertically-aligned-center is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow"><p>That&#8217;s a longstanding curation of rural America, and particularly Appalachia that we&#8217;ve had in the American public consciousness since before Johnson&#8217;s War on Poverty, and definitely after. And when I tell my students that folks that I worked with didn&#8217;t vote for Trump, largely, they&#8217;re kind of shocked. When I tell them that, on the local level, the elections often skewed Democratic, they were also kind of shocked. And that just reinforces that we don&#8217;t really, outside of Appalachia, have a good understanding of the history of things like the labor movement, the socialist movements within Appalachia that really do have strongholds.</p></div></div><p>This Orthodox group, even though they are far right, they challenge our assumptions about what the far right looks like and what they hold to be valuable. For example, I interviewed a pastor and his wife who were really quite in love with Trump, but they found Orthodox community even more right wing than them. So I think it challenges us to see the diversity on both sides, both in terms of right-wing populations and in terms of the fact that in rural communities there are Democrats, there are socialists, there are far right people there, it&#8217;s not homogenous in any way. And I hope that the book deconstructs that a bit for people.</p><p><strong>DY: As we enter this new presidential administration, what are you looking out for as a scholar of religion and a citizen?</strong></p><p><strong>SRS: </strong>This is a very critical moment in our democracy. And we have seen for the last few years, across the globe, rising forms of illiberalism and authoritarianism. And now we&#8217;re seeing it truly come home to the United States in a way that could transform our country quite drastically in the next few years if we don&#8217;t recognize that this is the same playbook that&#8217;s happening in other countries. And I am hopeful that our country recognizes where we&#8217;re headed, and that we do something about the course which we seem to have found ourselves on since January 20th. I anticipate that things are going to become far worse in our country unless something changes and we see more grassroots mobility to hold accountable people who are destroying the federal government from the inside out.</p><hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/><div id="signup" class="wp-block-group is-style-default has-light-gray-background-color has-background"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow"><div style="height:1px" aria-hidden="true" class="wp-block-spacer"></div>
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  121. <div class="wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-3 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex"><div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow" style="flex-basis:33.33%"><figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://dailyyonder.com/contact-us/subscribe-daily-yonder/#path-finders"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" width="780" height="780" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited-1296x1296.png?resize=780%2C780&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-70866" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?resize=1296%2C1296&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?resize=760%2C760&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?resize=768%2C768&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?resize=1536%2C1536&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?resize=1200%2C1200&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?resize=800%2C800&amp;ssl=1 800w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?resize=400%2C400&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?resize=200%2C200&amp;ssl=1 200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?resize=1568%2C1568&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?resize=300%2C300&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?resize=706%2C706&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?resize=100%2C100&amp;ssl=1 100w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?w=1697&amp;ssl=1 1697w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited-1296x1296.png?w=370&amp;ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" /></a></figure></div>
  122.  
  123. <div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow" style="flex-basis:66.66%"><p>This interview first appeared in <strong>Path Finders</strong>, a weekly email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each Monday, Path Finders features a Q&amp;A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Join the mailing list today, to have these illuminating conversations delivered straight to your inbox. </p></div></div>
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  152. </div></div></div><hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/><p></p><p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/qa-what-can-a-russian-orthodox-community-tell-us-about-rural-america/2025/03/21/">Q&amp;A: What Can a Russian Orthodox Community Tell Us about Rural America?</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  153. ]]></content:encoded>
  155. <wfw:commentRss>https://dailyyonder.com/qa-what-can-a-russian-orthodox-community-tell-us-about-rural-america/2025/03/21/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
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  159. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">227091</post-id> </item>
  160. <item>
  161. <title>Where Do Broadband Deserts Overlap with Healthcare Provider Shortages?</title>
  162. <link>https://dailyyonder.com/where-do-broadband-deserts-overlap-with-healthcare-provider-shortages/2025/03/21/</link>
  163. <comments>https://dailyyonder.com/where-do-broadband-deserts-overlap-with-healthcare-provider-shortages/2025/03/21/#respond</comments>
  165. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Sarah Melotte]]></dc:creator>
  166. <pubDate>Fri, 21 Mar 2025 09:58:00 +0000</pubDate>
  167. <category><![CDATA[Broadband]]></category>
  168. <category><![CDATA[Health]]></category>
  169. <category><![CDATA[Rural Index]]></category>
  170. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://dailyyonder.com/?p=227081</guid>
  171.  
  172. <description><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="667" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/JsBdF-.png?fit=1024%2C667&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/JsBdF-.png?w=1240&amp;ssl=1 1240w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/JsBdF-.png?resize=760%2C495&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/JsBdF-.png?resize=768%2C500&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/JsBdF-.png?resize=1200%2C782&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/JsBdF-.png?resize=1024%2C667&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/JsBdF-.png?resize=400%2C261&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/JsBdF-.png?resize=706%2C460&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/JsBdF-.png?fit=1024%2C667&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure>
  173. <p>Editor’s Note: This post is from our data newsletter, the Rural Index, headed by Sarah Melotte, the Daily Yonder’s data reporter. Subscribe to get a weekly map or graph straight to your inbox. Earlier this week, the Daily Yonder republished a KFF Health News article about a woman named Barbara Williams with diabetes who lives [&#8230;]</p>
  174. <p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/where-do-broadband-deserts-overlap-with-healthcare-provider-shortages/2025/03/21/">Where Do Broadband Deserts Overlap with Healthcare Provider Shortages?</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  175. ]]></description>
  176. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="667" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/JsBdF-.png?fit=1024%2C667&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/JsBdF-.png?w=1240&amp;ssl=1 1240w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/JsBdF-.png?resize=760%2C495&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/JsBdF-.png?resize=768%2C500&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/JsBdF-.png?resize=1200%2C782&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/JsBdF-.png?resize=1024%2C667&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/JsBdF-.png?resize=400%2C261&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/JsBdF-.png?resize=706%2C460&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/JsBdF-.png?fit=1024%2C667&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure><p><em>Editor’s Note: This post is from our data newsletter, the Rural Index, headed by Sarah Melotte, the Daily Yonder’s data reporter. </em><a href="https://dailyyonder.com/contact-us/subscribe-daily-yonder/#rural-index"><em>Subscribe</em></a><em> to get a weekly map or graph straight to your inbox.</em><br></p><iframe title="Overlapping Broadband and Healthcare Provider Shortages" aria-label="Map" id="datawrapper-chart-vTyIl" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/vTyIl/3/" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="width: 0; min-width: 100% !important; border: none;" height="508" data-external="1"></iframe><script type="text/javascript">!function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}}))}();
  177. </script><p>Earlier this week, the Daily Yonder republished a <a href="https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/dead-zone-sickest-counties-slow-internet-broadband-desert-health-care-provider-shortage/?utm_campaign=KHN%3A%20Daily%20Health%20Policy%20Report&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_ylSyAMjvZfriyP4V7_f1QBgFKFQ6yaqcnWLZAkS9w3qEd1l2QdcVgPqqe3ba46RFCoGUR700ydKPuBiVXOsDef9yfCg&amp;_hsmi=350954153&amp;utm_content=350954153&amp;utm_source=hs_email">KFF Health News article</a> about a woman named Barbara Williams with diabetes who lives in rural Alabama. Williams’ hometown of Boligee lacks both high speed internet and enough primary care and behavioral health physicians to treat the community’s residents. She sees a nurse practitioner in a neighboring town to treat her diabetes.</p><p>“I know how my sugar affects me,” Williams, who suffers from diabetic neuropathy, told KFF Health news. “I get a headache if it’s too high.”</p><p>About 2.7 million Americans live in counties where broadband deserts overlap with shortages in primary care providers and behavior health specialists, according to a <a href="https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/dead-zone-sickest-counties-slow-internet-broadband-desert-health-care-provider-shortage/?utm_campaign=KHN%3A%20Daily%20Health%20Policy%20Report&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_ylSyAMjvZfriyP4V7_f1QBgFKFQ6yaqcnWLZAkS9w3qEd1l2QdcVgPqqe3ba46RFCoGUR700ydKPuBiVXOsDef9yfCg&amp;_hsmi=350954153&amp;utm_content=350954153&amp;utm_source=hs_email">data analysis from KFF Health News</a> reporters Sarah Jane Tribble and Holly K. Hacker.</p><p>KFF Health News journalists refer to these areas as “dead zones.” I will call them shortage areas, in deference to communities there that are very much alive, even though they may not have all the services that most of us can take for granted.&nbsp;</p><p>KFF Health News classified counties as <a href="https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/dead-zone-sickest-counties-slow-internet-broadband-desert-health-care-provider-shortage/#methodology">shortage areas if</a> fewer than 70% of households had reliable broadband, if the ratio between Medicaid enrollees per primary care provider was in the bottom third of counties, and if the ratio between behavioral health providers per resident was also in the bottom third of counties.&nbsp;</p><p>People who live in these counties “live sicker and die earlier,” wrote Tribble and Hacker. Unreliable broadband only widens existing health disparities, like the one between rural and urban residents.&nbsp;</p><p>In 2023, the most recent year of available data, 83% of residents in nonmetropolitan, or rural, counties had access to broadband, compared to over 90% of metropolitan residents. And healthcare provider shortages only exacerbate the challenges associated with unreliable broadband, according to KFF Health News.</p><p><a href="https://www.aafp.org/pubs/afp/issues/2022/0300/p281.pdf">In a 2022 report,</a> endocrinologist Rashmi Mullur found that patients with diabetes were more likely to be able to control their blood sugar when they had access to telehealth services, for example.</p><p>Out of the 2.7 million Americans who live in these shortage areas, almost 2 million, or 70% of them, are from rural counties. That means the rate at which rural residents live in these shortage areas is five times higher than the urban rate.&nbsp;</p><p>The rural Black Belt in the American South is a significant hotspot for this phenomenon. <a href="https://southernspaces.org/2004/black-belt/">The Black Belt refers to a region</a> of historically fertile soil stretching from Louisiana to Virginia. Due to the enduring legacies of racism, slavery, plantation agriculture, and systemic disinvestment, the area remains deeply impoverished. In the map above, the crescent-shaped cluster of counties in the Deep South represents the shortage areas of the Black Belt.</p><p>In the Black Belt, 14% of residents live in a broadband and medical-care shortage area, compared to less than 1% of the American population at large. Over 35% of Black Belt residents receive Medicaid, meanwhile.</p><p>In rural Holmes County, Mississippi, for example, only 65% of residents have access to broadband internet. About 17,000 residents live in Holmes County, where the median annual income is just over $29,000. Eight-three percent of Holmes County residents are Black or African American, according to Census estimates.</p><p>Parts of Central Appalachia are also hotspots for shortage areas.&nbsp;</p><p>About 10% of rural West Virginians live in counties where broadband desert and healthcare provider shortages overlap, representing about 187,000 people.&nbsp;</p><p>Only 22% of residents in rural Calhoun County, West Virginia, a community of around 6,200 people, have access to broadband. The median income in Calhoun County is about $41,000, about $34,000 lower than the national median.</p><p>The work of KFF Health News demonstrates the compounding impact of poverty in rural America. Telehealth offers great promise to deliver care to people who otherwise must go without. But broadband access requires the kind of local investment these same communities are likely not to have. It’s an age-old problem. Those who have less get less.</p><p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/where-do-broadband-deserts-overlap-with-healthcare-provider-shortages/2025/03/21/">Where Do Broadband Deserts Overlap with Healthcare Provider Shortages?</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
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  186. <title>Ozarks Notebook: Reading Between the Lines of Silence </title>
  187. <link>https://dailyyonder.com/ozarks-notebook-reading-between-the-lines-of-silence/2025/03/20/</link>
  188. <comments>https://dailyyonder.com/ozarks-notebook-reading-between-the-lines-of-silence/2025/03/20/#respond</comments>
  190. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Kaitlyn McConnell]]></dc:creator>
  191. <pubDate>Thu, 20 Mar 2025 10:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
  192. <category><![CDATA[Government & Policy]]></category>
  193. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://dailyyonder.com/?p=227111</guid>
  194.  
  195. <description><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="701" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-4.jpg?fit=1024%2C701&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-4.jpg?w=2126&amp;ssl=1 2126w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-4.jpg?resize=760%2C520&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-4.jpg?resize=1296%2C888&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-4.jpg?resize=768%2C526&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-4.jpg?resize=1536%2C1052&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-4.jpg?resize=2048%2C1403&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-4.jpg?resize=1200%2C822&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-4.jpg?resize=1024%2C701&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-4.jpg?resize=1568%2C1074&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-4.jpg?resize=2000%2C1370&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-4.jpg?resize=400%2C274&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-4.jpg?resize=706%2C484&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-4.jpg?fit=1024%2C701&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure>
  196. <p>The trees need us and a good reminder of this reality is “The Lorax,” a children’s book by Dr. Seuss.&#160; Its colorful pages tell of a whimsical world filled with truffula trees, and the namesake main character’s confrontations with the Once-ler, a business magnate who causes environmental destruction by cutting all the trees down for [&#8230;]</p>
  197. <p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/ozarks-notebook-reading-between-the-lines-of-silence/2025/03/20/">Ozarks Notebook: Reading Between the Lines of Silence </a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  198. ]]></description>
  199. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="701" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-4.jpg?fit=1024%2C701&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-4.jpg?w=2126&amp;ssl=1 2126w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-4.jpg?resize=760%2C520&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-4.jpg?resize=1296%2C888&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-4.jpg?resize=768%2C526&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-4.jpg?resize=1536%2C1052&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-4.jpg?resize=2048%2C1403&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-4.jpg?resize=1200%2C822&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-4.jpg?resize=1024%2C701&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-4.jpg?resize=1568%2C1074&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-4.jpg?resize=2000%2C1370&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-4.jpg?resize=400%2C274&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-4.jpg?resize=706%2C484&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-4.jpg?fit=1024%2C701&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure><p>The trees need us and a good reminder of this reality is “<a href="https://yale.learningu.org/download/91736886-e31e-47c0-8a3b-f1c1843a6f7c/H3146_The%20Lorax_Storybook.pdf">The Lorax</a>,” a children’s book by Dr. Seuss.&nbsp;</p><p>Its colorful pages tell of a whimsical world filled with truffula trees, and the namesake main character’s confrontations with the Once-ler, a business magnate who causes environmental destruction by cutting all the trees down for profit.</p><p>Dr. Seuss takes readers through the total destruction of the truffula forest and the departure of the creatures who lived among the trees – including the Lorax.</p><p>The book was written in the 1970s but feels pretty relevant today as we are faced with cuts at our national parks and forests in the Ozarks and across the country. It also reminds us that it takes someone to stand up and protect these special places.&nbsp;</p><p>When I began writing the column, these cuts were more related to personnel; now, that question has also expanded to the trees themselves. <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/immediate-expansion-of-american-timber-production/">President Trump issued an executive order on March 1</a> to streamline the process for timber production, a decision that would seem to involve our federal lands.</p><p>I can say that I’m concerned about what this means for the Ozarks and other rural spaces across the country. But in recent weeks, I learned that many others cannot speak up.&nbsp;</p><p>The dozen or so park-tied folks I reached out to for comments on the cuts resulted in few responses, not much on the record, and little concrete information. People were afraid to talk.&nbsp;</p><p>The fear is understandable, as terrible as it is to say. It’s a scary thing if your livelihood is at stake. And things are undeniably uncertain; <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/04/trump-directive-fire-probationary-employees">in some cases, were the firings of probationary employees even legal</a>?</p><p>But this lack of information leads to gaps in understanding of where things actually stand.&nbsp;</p><p><br>And it doesn’t change the question: Who will speak for the trees?&nbsp;</p><h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Importance of Protected Lands</strong></h3><p>The Ozarks is home to a roster of protected sites within the National Park Service. Two examples are <a href="https://www.nps.gov/ozar/index.htm">Ozark National Scenic Riverways</a> (ONSR) and the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/buff/index.htm">Buffalo National River</a> (BNR), in Missouri and Arkansas respectively, which represent the first federally recognized waterways of their kind when they became parks decades ago.</p><p>Other local places protect our collective history, such as <a href="https://www.nps.gov/gwca/index.htm">George Washington Carver National Monument</a> – in memory of the famed Black scientist, who hailed from the Ozarks – and <a href="https://www.nps.gov/peri/index.htm">Pea Ridge National Military Park</a>, where an outnumbered group of Union troops brought victory in 1862.</p><p>We’re also home to the <a href="https://www.fs.usda.gov/mtnf">Mark Twain National Forest</a>, which represents 1.5 million acres of wooded, remote land mostly located in southern Missouri and northern Arkansas. Part of that is the <a href="https://www.fs.usda.gov/recarea/mtnf/recarea/?recid=21676">Eleven Point River</a>, which was designated as a Wild and Scenic River in 1968.</p><p>The peace found in these protected places is in contrast to the tension they have also churned up at times in their histories. The creation of ONSR in 1964 and the BNR in 1972 brought unrest as local families were compelled to leave land that, in some cases, had been in their hands for generations. Even today, some still hold anger about the perceived overreach of government.</p><p>I get it. In rural spaces, we want to feel we control our place. If I had been one of the landowners back then, there is no doubt that I would have been heartbroken that my land was being “taken” from me for something I didn’t choose.&nbsp;</p><p>Yet as I walk trails and explore these beautiful natural jewels, I am thankful that we have them to collectively enjoy – and that they are protected. And I’m not the only one.&nbsp;</p><p><a href="https://www.nps.gov/ozar/learn/news/tourism-to-ozark-national-scenic-riverways-contributes-$76-8-million-to-local-economy-report-shows-visitor-spending-supports-908-jobs-in-nearby-communities.htm">In 2023, ONSR reported having 1.3 million visitors</a> and had a cumulative economic impact of $76.8 million. Numbers for the Buffalo were similar: “The 1.3 million visitors to Buffalo National River in 2022 contributed over $64.9 million in spending to local gateway regions,” <a href="https://www.nps.gov/buff/learn/news/buffalo-national-river-contributes-to-record-economic-output-of-the-national-park-service.htm">noted a news release</a>. “This supported 864 jobs and had a total economic output of $78.4 million.”</p><figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" width="780" height="520" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Buffalo-River.jpg?resize=780%2C520&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-227114" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Buffalo-River-scaled.jpg?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Buffalo-River-scaled.jpg?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Buffalo-River-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Buffalo-River-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Buffalo-River-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Buffalo-River-scaled.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Buffalo-River-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Buffalo-River-scaled.jpg?resize=1568%2C1045&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Buffalo-River-scaled.jpg?resize=2000%2C1333&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Buffalo-River-scaled.jpg?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Buffalo-River-scaled.jpg?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Buffalo-River-scaled.jpg?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Buffalo-River-1296x864.jpg?w=370&amp;ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">The Buffalo National River flows through Arkansas. It was officially founded in 1972, becoming the nation’s first national river. (Photo by Kaitlyn McConnell)</figcaption></figure><p>I know I’m preaching to the rural choir here, but these figures are a big deal in areas with limited industry and job opportunities.&nbsp;</p><p>That is one reason why it concerned me – as I know it did many others – when I learned that there would be potential cuts to personnel at these places.&nbsp;</p><p>I can’t tell you just how many people have been cut from local rosters because my questions have largely gone unanswered or information is vague. (And while numbers are unclear, it would also appear that cuts may be growing from initial numbers because of buyouts and early retirements. <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-02-26/more-than-700-national-parks-employees-take-buyout">The Los Angeles Times reported that more than 700 people had taken the deal</a> as of late February, bringing the NPS’s workforce down about nine percent in just one month.)&nbsp;</p><p>When I inquired about OSNR’s cuts, the NPS regional spokesperson wrote that she couldn’t comment because it was a personnel matter. Volunteers didn’t want to be identified. Emails sent to the Buffalo PIO email address went unanswered. A representative from USDA, the entity under which the forest service falls, did respond and noted that they were cutting 2,000 probationary, non-firefighting employees.</p><p>“Secretary Rollins fully supports the President’s directive to improve government, eliminate inefficiencies and strengthen USDA’s many services to the American people. We have a solemn responsibility to be good stewards of the American people’s hard-earned taxpayer dollars and to ensure that every dollar spent goes to serve the people, not the bureaucracy,” the response read.&nbsp;</p><p>“As part of this effort, USDA has made the difficult decision to release about 2,000 probationary, non-firefighting employees from the Forest Service. To be clear, none of these individuals were operational firefighters. Released employees were probationary in status, many of whom were compensated by temporary IRA funding. It’s unfortunate that the Biden administration hired thousands of people with no plan in place to pay them long term. Secretary Rollins is committed to preserving essential safety positions and will ensure that critical services remain uninterrupted.”&nbsp;</p><p>Through silence, I can read between the lines – and know that, for some folks, a key reason for this silence is fear for their job. And that silence is scary, too.&nbsp;</p><p><a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/02/26/nx-s1-5307908/national-parks-layoffs-visitors-disruptions">Even though seasonal positions are being filled</a>, will the visitor experience be different with a reduction in staff? Will fewer employees mean there’s more trash in a park, or programs don’t happen, or it’s less scenic when trees are removed, will it make visitors slightly less supportive of these places over the long term?&nbsp;</p><p>Over time, does it make visitors feel like the land isn’t as relevant or important? For example, one of the Buffalo River’s visitor centers has closed. <a href="https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2025/feb/26/one-of-two-visitor-centers-closed-at-buffalo/">According to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette</a>, that was because of the firings. Could the designations go away because people won’t see their value in the same way any longer?&nbsp;</p><p>And what assurance do we have that the trees themselves will be OK?&nbsp;</p><p>“USDA is reviewing all executive orders signed by President Trump and expects to share guidance on implementing them to agencies and mission areas as soon as possible,” the Forest Service spokesperson also wrote. “We do not have additional information to share at this time.”&nbsp;</p><figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" width="780" height="520" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-1.jpg?resize=780%2C520&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-227115" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-1-scaled.jpg?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-1-scaled.jpg?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-1-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-1-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-1-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-1-scaled.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-1-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-1-scaled.jpg?resize=1568%2C1045&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-1-scaled.jpg?resize=2000%2C1333&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-1-scaled.jpg?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-1-scaled.jpg?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-1-scaled.jpg?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Wilsons-Creek-1-1296x864.jpg?w=370&amp;ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Demonstrators gathered on March 1 at Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield to show support for national parks. It was one of many events planned across more than 430 national park sites to show support for the protected lands. (Photo by Kaitlyn McConnell)</figcaption></figure><h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Demonstrations Put Passion to Action </strong></h3><p>Which brings us back to the beginning: With staff and volunteers unable to share, who will speak for the trees?</p><p>I found a few of them on Saturday at Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield, a park near the Ozarks largest city of Springfield and where the first major Civil War battle west of the Mississippi River occurred in 1861. On that sunny afternoon, a few dozen people gathered to show support for our national parks. It was one of many similar efforts taking place across the country.&nbsp;</p><p>Folks carrying homemade signs walked up to the “FIrst Amendment” grassy space that’s allocated for events such as this. Those often colorful signs spoke of a shared mission: “We Heart NPS,” “STOP Budget Cuts, Staffing Cuts and Drilling and Privatization.” A colorful one decorated with hearts, trees, stars, and leaves held in young hands proclaimed “Save Our Parks: We Need Nature.”</p><p>Kids ran and played. Baby Juniper, just a few months old, stayed close to her mom, Andrea Stephenson.&nbsp;</p><p>“One day she’s going to grow up and be a big girl,” said Stephenson, who said that personal concern for the environment’s future had grown even during pregnancy. “I hope people are motivated to help protect a little more of the natural world so it’s still here in the future.”</p><p>The chatter was upbeat and friendly – and motivated.&nbsp;</p><p>“My main goal is to spread awareness,” said Julia Casella, one of the event’s organizers. “Because I think a lot of our people in this area do care about nature and protecting federal lands and enjoying it, but they may not really know that it’s under threat. We just want people to know that they really are in danger.</p><p>“I’m just concerned that if parks are not staffed, they’re not safe; maybe won’t even be open for us. I mean, it is a political issue but it’s also not because who doesn’t enjoy nature?”&nbsp;</p><p>The local parks bring value to her family’s life, Casella tells me, as they live nearby and often visit the Wilson’s Creek park. Her 11-year-old son Alexander also had his own opinions on why it – and other parks they frequent – are important.&nbsp;</p><p>“In general, this is important to me to know where we came from,” he said. “But also I like the nature around it. It’s just such a beautiful place and I think we should keep it that way.&nbsp;</p><p>“I really enjoy these places and I think future generations would, too.”</p><p>He can speak for the trees.&nbsp;</p><hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-dots"/><p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/ozarks-notebook-reading-between-the-lines-of-silence/2025/03/20/">Ozarks Notebook: Reading Between the Lines of Silence </a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
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  206. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">227111</post-id> </item>
  207. <item>
  208. <title>Celebrating the Great Outdoors – From the Great Indoors</title>
  209. <link>https://dailyyonder.com/celebrating-the-great-outdoors-from-the-great-indoors-getaway-podcast-movie-recs/2025/03/20/</link>
  210. <comments>https://dailyyonder.com/celebrating-the-great-outdoors-from-the-great-indoors-getaway-podcast-movie-recs/2025/03/20/#respond</comments>
  212. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Anya Petrone Slepyan and Staff]]></dc:creator>
  213. <pubDate>Thu, 20 Mar 2025 09:59:00 +0000</pubDate>
  214. <category><![CDATA[Arts & Culture]]></category>
  215. <category><![CDATA[Travel & Recreation]]></category>
  216. <category><![CDATA[The Good, the Bad, and the Elegy]]></category>
  217. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://dailyyonder.com/?p=227051</guid>
  218.  
  219. <description><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="683" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/MV5BOWE1MGJiYjItY2MyMC00NmQxLWE5NTYtYmNlYjkzNTdhZmFiXkEyXkFqcGc%40._V1_-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="dramatic overhead image of a cliffside being ascended by a climber in clad in red" decoding="async" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure>
  220. <p>To celebrate Rural Remix's latest podcast, "Getaway," we've put together a roundup of our favorite movies and documentaries about outdoor recreation.</p>
  221. <p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/celebrating-the-great-outdoors-from-the-great-indoors-getaway-podcast-movie-recs/2025/03/20/">Celebrating the Great Outdoors – From the Great Indoors</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  222. ]]></description>
  223. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="683" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/MV5BOWE1MGJiYjItY2MyMC00NmQxLWE5NTYtYmNlYjkzNTdhZmFiXkEyXkFqcGc%40._V1_-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="dramatic overhead image of a cliffside being ascended by a climber in clad in red" decoding="async" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure><p style="font-size:14px"><em>Editor’s Note: A version of this story first appeared in The Good, the Bad, and the Elegy, a newsletter from the Daily Yonder focused on the best, and worst, in rural media, entertainment, and culture. Every other Thursday, it features reviews, retrospectives, recommendations, and more. You can </em><a href="https://dailyyonder.com/#signup"><em>join the </em></a><em><a href="#signup">mailing</a></em><a href="#signup"><em> list at the bottom of this article</em></a><em> to receive future editions in your inbox</em>.</p><p>Some people want to surf monstrous waves, hike or bike thousands of miles, or risk a broken neck sliding down steep, snowy mountains on little planks of wood. Others (like me), are more into car camping, star gazing, or trail riding. Though they vary in their intensity, each of these activities is considered outdoor recreation, a category estimated to contribute $1.2 trillion to the American economy each year and which depends largely on small, rural communities surrounded by public lands.&nbsp;</p><p>&#8220;<a href="https://dailyyonder.com/podcasts/rural-remix/getaway/">Getaway</a>,&#8221; a new podcast from Daily Yonder reporter Ilana Newman, dives deep into the world of rural recreation economies, revealing how outdoor recreation can both benefit and challenge rural towns and counties around the country. Whether you’re a thru-hiker or a mall walker, you can listen to &#8220;Getaway&#8221; on the Rural Remix feed, <a href="https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/rural-remix/episodes/GETAWAY-Ep--1---How-to-build-a-recreation-economy-e2vo2nr/a-abqjmo7">wherever you get your podcasts</a>.</p><p>The world of outdoor recreation also provides rich fodder for indoor entertainment options, including endless movies and documentaries focused on adventure in the great outdoors. In honor of the release of &#8220;Getaway,&#8221; we’ve compiled some of our favorite outdoorsy movies that can be watched from the comfort of your own couch.</p><h2 class="wp-block-heading has-text-align-left">Free Solo</h2><figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
  224. <iframe title="Free Solo - Trailer | National Geographic" width="780" height="439" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/urRVZ4SW7WU?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
  225. </div><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">An official trailer for &#8216;Free Solo&#8217; (via National Geographic on YouTube).</figcaption></figure><p>The 2018 sports documentary &#8220;Free Solo&#8221; follows American rock climber Alex Honnold as he attempts to be the first person to scale the sheer granite cliff face of El Capitan — via a 2,900 foot route — without a rope. Sound scary? It is! Even to Honnold, one of the best rock climbers in the world, who is revealed to have an under-firing amygdala (the part of the brain that processes emotions like fear and anxiety).&nbsp;</p><p>My amygdala fires just fine, and it gets put to work anytime I stop to think too hard about &#8220;Free Solo.&#8221; As a viewer you feel immense empathy not only for Honnold’s parents and girlfriend, but for the film director and camera crew who understand there is every possibility they will watch their friend plummet out of frame and to his death. The shots, taken from above, below, and parallel to Honnold, are literally breathtaking (and panic-inducing?), and even rewatching <a href="https://youtu.be/urRVZ4SW7WU?si=So0Pfi7N4RABN_zS">the trailer</a> raises my heart rate considerably. But the movie — like the incredible feat it documents — is just as mesmerizing and awe-inspiring as it is terrifying.</p><p><em>Free Solo is streaming on <a href="https://www.hulu.com/movie/free-solo-5bc87ba3-cda0-4f46-b81c-4c3ea170e9d1?entity_id=5bc87ba3-cda0-4f46-b81c-4c3ea170e9d1">Hulu</a> and <a href="https://www.disneyplus.com/movies/free-solo/3ibzvuU6iPlE">Disney+</a> and available to rent or buy through video on demand (VOD) platforms.</em></p><p class="has-text-align-right"><em>&#8211; Anya Petrone Slepyan</em></p><h2 class="wp-block-heading has-text-align-left">Cliffhanger</h2><figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
  226. <iframe title="Cliffhanger (1993) Trailer #1 | Movieclips Classic Trailers" width="780" height="439" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2j18n9shdw8?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
  227. </div><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">A trailer for &#8216;Cliffhanger&#8217; (via Rotten Tomatoes Classic Trailers on YouTube). </figcaption></figure><p>What better ambassador for the Great Outdoors than the famed Rocky Mountains of Colorado? Well, they never looked better than they do here — as filmed on location in the Italian Dolomites — for the action-packed &#8220;<a href="https://youtu.be/2j18n9shdw8?si=FppsqFkIt1sSGLzQ">Cliffhanger</a>.&#8221; The film stars Sylvester &#8220;Sly&#8221; Stallone and tells the tale of a daring mountain rescue team suddenly facing off with a bunch of international ex-military criminals.</p><p>The movie is a delightful fantasy on all possible levels. The plot is ridiculous, and the dialogue sounds like it was lifted from a soap opera. The vistas remind one of paintings commissioned for the Manifest Destiny march westward, where the grandeur of American landscapes gets compressed into a single frame containing giant mountains, sprawling forests, wide rivers and a virtual safari of American wildlife. It’s funny, but it makes you want to keep looking.</p><p>The climbing sequences make the daring, unprotected climb from &#8220;Free Solo&#8221; look tame. &#8220;Cliffhanger&#8221; earned itself a legendary status among climbers for just how over-the-top it is. And while it does rightfully glorify search and rescue professionals, it makes the outdoors seem extremely remote, yet accessible; deadly, but also oddly survivable. It’s innocent fun best enjoyed with a drink (a double). And as the joke goes: “It was the &#8217;90s, relax!”</p><p><em>Cliffhanger is available to rent or buy through video on demand (VOD) platforms. </em></p><p class="has-text-align-right"><em>&#8211; Jan Pytalski</em></p><h2 class="wp-block-heading has-text-align-left">The Barkley Marathons</h2><figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
  228. <iframe title="The Barkley Marathons: The Race That Eats Its Young - Official Trailer (2015) Documentary" width="780" height="439" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/79IUKC9gS-8?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
  229. </div><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">An official trailer for &#8216;The Barkley Marathons&#8217; (via barkley movie on YouTube). </figcaption></figure><p>Ever dream of running 100 miles off trail through the Tennessee woods, not knowing where you’re going, following a copied map and collecting pages of books along the way? Yeah, me neither. But once a year, about 35 to 40 runners get chosen through a bizarre entry form that has included questions like, “What is the most important vegetable group?” to run a contrived, five loop run through the woods of Morgan County, Tennessee.</p><p>Inspired by the 1977 escape of James Earl Ray from a nearby prison (which is now part of the race course), the race has been held pretty much every year since 1985 (except 2020). Only 20 people have ever finished it. This 2014 documentary was one of the first looks behind the scenes of the eccentric race founder “Lazarus Lake” and the unique traditions that accompany this strange ultramarathon. It’s a highly entertaining watch and maybe you’ll even catch the Barkley bug!</p><p><em>The Barkley Marathons: The Race That Eats Its Young is available to watch <a href="https://youtu.be/LZ-DE-hmiGE?si=yZG4v_BdlI7AeysN">on YouTube</a>, <a href="https://www.peacocktv.com/watch-online/movies/documentary/the-barkley-marathons-the-race-that-eats-its-young/d3acd266-96f7-33e3-8303-a1bbc3895bf7">Peacock</a>, and SlingTV.</em></p><p class="has-text-align-right"><em>&#8211; Ilana Newman</em></p><h2 class="wp-block-heading has-text-align-left">A Goofy Movie</h2><figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
  230. <iframe title="A Goofy Movie" width="780" height="439" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Nkcjup5igDI?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
  231. </div><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">A preview for &#8216;A Goofy Movie&#8217; (via YouTube Movies). </figcaption></figure><p>Like many parents before them, mine were committed to instilling within their kids the &#8220;travel bug.&#8221; They set a standard of taking at least one family trip each year to places all over the United States. In the process of visiting trademark destinations and engaging in typical activities, I&#8217;d say they more than accomplished their mission. Today, as I relish visiting national parks and natural wonders, I look back on those memories and the example they set with gratitude. </p><p>But that doesn&#8217;t mean it was always a seamless or easy process at the time. Look no further than this nostalgic slice of Disney animation for an idea of what I&#8217;m talking about. For a while there the teenage angst was potent, as my sister and I endured long bus rides, kitschy motels, and pre-programmed itineraries, sighing at every step. One can forgive the average pre-teen for having lots of ideas about what they&#8217;d rather be doing than attending a pitchfork fondue or touring the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_Palace">Mitchell Corn Palace</a>. But as &#8220;A Goofy Movie&#8221; so deftly captures, through all the ups and downs, nothing can replace those journeys we take together. </p><p><em>A Goofy Movie is <a href="https://www.disneyplus.com/movies/a-goofy-movie/3fo2pP85XXvo">streaming on Disney+</a> and available to rent or buy through video on demand (VOD) platforms. </em></p><p class="has-text-align-right"><em>&#8211; Adam B. Giorgi</em></p><h2 class="wp-block-heading has-text-align-left">The Endless Summer</h2><figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
  232. <iframe title="The Endless Summer - Trailer" width="780" height="439" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yZsuQXKkPdw?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
  233. </div><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">A trailer for &#8216;The Endless Summer&#8217; (via Cineverse on YouTube). </figcaption></figure><p>In the winter of 1969, I was introduced to 16mm documentary filmmaking. It was pure dumb luck to be in high school in Whitesburg, Kentucky when the American Film Institute put some money behind a project to teach media skills to young people from places not generally reflected in television and film.</p><p>Over the months that followed, a group of us learned the craft while telling stories about our place and our culture. We watched the emerging body of work produced using small format film and the new, almost portable video decks. We rented 16mm films and borrowed space in churches and schools to screen them for ourselves and anybody that wanted to talk about filmmaking.</p><p>One of the films we rented was &#8220;The Endless Summer&#8221; by Bruce Brown, a 1966 documentary film that follows surfers Mike Hynson and Robert August on a surfing trip around the world. They travel from their native California to the coasts of Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, Hawaii, Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa looking for the perfect wave.</p><p>The film has absolutely no sync sound — the audio is Brown’s narration, surf rock music by The Sandals, and some studio sound effects. It felt like watching a slideshow of your cousin’s vacation, with them telling you about where they went while spinning an LP on the turntable. Which is exactly what it was.</p><p>The surfers don’t speak, and the descriptions of the locales and the locals are all Brown’s sense of these communities. That hasn’t held up well over the past 60 years. But it was completely accessible for a 17-year-old whose only exposure to media production was when a CBS News crew had come to his house on a hillside in Letcher County to shoot an establishing shot of downtown Whitesburg.</p><p><em>The Endless Summer is <a href="https://tubitv.com/movies/154268/the-endless-summer-digitally-remastered">streaming on Tubi</a> and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/amzn1.dv.gti.a6a9f786-ac53-8c59-7ff6-728f081695b3?autoplay=0">Amazon Prime Video</a>, and is available to watch for free, rent, or buy through video on demand (VOD) platforms.</em></p><p class="has-text-align-right"><em>&#8211; Marty Newell</em></p><div id="signup" class="wp-block-group is-style-default has-light-gray-background-color has-background"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow"><div style="height:1px" aria-hidden="true" class="wp-block-spacer"></div>
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  237. <div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow" style="flex-basis:75%"><p>This article first appeared in&nbsp;<strong>The Good, the Bad, and the Elegy</strong>, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder focused on the best, and worst, in rural media, entertainment, and culture. Every other Thursday, it features reviews, recommendations, retrospectives, and more. <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/contact-us/subscribe-daily-yonder/#good-bad-elegy">Join the mailing list</a> today to have future editions delivered straight to your inbox.</p></div></div>
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  269. <div style="height:10px" aria-hidden="true" class="wp-block-spacer"></div></div></div><hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-dots"/><p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/celebrating-the-great-outdoors-from-the-great-indoors-getaway-podcast-movie-recs/2025/03/20/">Celebrating the Great Outdoors – From the Great Indoors</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  270. ]]></content:encoded>
  272. <wfw:commentRss>https://dailyyonder.com/celebrating-the-great-outdoors-from-the-great-indoors-getaway-podcast-movie-recs/2025/03/20/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  273. <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
  276. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">227051</post-id> </item>
  277. <item>
  278. <title>In Rural Alaska, A Powerful Documentary Flips the Script for Child Care Funding</title>
  279. <link>https://dailyyonder.com/in-rural-alaska-a-powerful-documentary-flips-the-script-for-child-care-funding/2025/03/19/</link>
  280. <comments>https://dailyyonder.com/in-rural-alaska-a-powerful-documentary-flips-the-script-for-child-care-funding/2025/03/19/#respond</comments>
  282. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Anne Vilen]]></dc:creator>
  283. <pubDate>Wed, 19 Mar 2025 10:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
  284. <category><![CDATA[Arts & Culture]]></category>
  285. <category><![CDATA[Labor]]></category>
  286. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://dailyyonder.com/?p=226804</guid>
  287.  
  288. <description><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="683" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Tracey-and-Bailey-Schaeffer-Nunakins.jpeg?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Tracey-and-Bailey-Schaeffer-Nunakins.jpeg?w=2048&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Tracey-and-Bailey-Schaeffer-Nunakins.jpeg?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Tracey-and-Bailey-Schaeffer-Nunakins.jpeg?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Tracey-and-Bailey-Schaeffer-Nunakins.jpeg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Tracey-and-Bailey-Schaeffer-Nunakins.jpeg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Tracey-and-Bailey-Schaeffer-Nunakins.jpeg?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Tracey-and-Bailey-Schaeffer-Nunakins.jpeg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Tracey-and-Bailey-Schaeffer-Nunakins.jpeg?resize=1568%2C1045&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Tracey-and-Bailey-Schaeffer-Nunakins.jpeg?resize=2000%2C1333&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Tracey-and-Bailey-Schaeffer-Nunakins.jpeg?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Tracey-and-Bailey-Schaeffer-Nunakins.jpeg?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Tracey-and-Bailey-Schaeffer-Nunakins.jpeg?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure>
  289. <p>Social worker and filmmaker Laura Norton-Cruz remembers vividly finding out that she was pregnant and feeling like she’d just been “thrown to the wolves.”&#160; “What am I going to do about child care?” she asked. “What am I going to do about breastfeeding and pumping at work? What am I going to do about paid [&#8230;]</p>
  290. <p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/in-rural-alaska-a-powerful-documentary-flips-the-script-for-child-care-funding/2025/03/19/">In Rural Alaska, A Powerful Documentary Flips the Script for Child Care Funding</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  291. ]]></description>
  292. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="683" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Tracey-and-Bailey-Schaeffer-Nunakins.jpeg?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Tracey-and-Bailey-Schaeffer-Nunakins.jpeg?w=2048&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Tracey-and-Bailey-Schaeffer-Nunakins.jpeg?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Tracey-and-Bailey-Schaeffer-Nunakins.jpeg?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Tracey-and-Bailey-Schaeffer-Nunakins.jpeg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Tracey-and-Bailey-Schaeffer-Nunakins.jpeg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Tracey-and-Bailey-Schaeffer-Nunakins.jpeg?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Tracey-and-Bailey-Schaeffer-Nunakins.jpeg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Tracey-and-Bailey-Schaeffer-Nunakins.jpeg?resize=1568%2C1045&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Tracey-and-Bailey-Schaeffer-Nunakins.jpeg?resize=2000%2C1333&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Tracey-and-Bailey-Schaeffer-Nunakins.jpeg?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Tracey-and-Bailey-Schaeffer-Nunakins.jpeg?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Tracey-and-Bailey-Schaeffer-Nunakins.jpeg?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure><p>Social worker and filmmaker <a href="https://www.lauranortoncruzconsulting.com/about">Laura Norton-Cruz</a> remembers vividly finding out that she was pregnant and feeling like she’d just been “thrown to the wolves.”&nbsp; “What am I going to do about child care?” she asked. “What am I going to do about breastfeeding and pumping at work? What am I going to do about paid leave?”&nbsp;</p><p>None of those supports were available at her workplace in Anchorage, Alaska, much less in the remote villages where she often worked with the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium.&nbsp;</p><p>When a decade later she was given the opportunity to design a project for the <a href="https://cultureofhealth-leaders.org/index.html">Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Culture of Health Leaders</a> initiative, and recalled how abandoned she felt during her first years as a single mom with a baby and a toddler, she turned her camera lens on <a href="https://censusreporter.org/profiles/16000US0241830-kotzebue-ak/">Kotzebue, Alaska</a>–a remote town of 3000 residents, primarily Alaska Native people, with more than 500 children under the age of five, and not a single licensed child care facility.</p><p>In collaboration with filmmaker Joshua Branstetter, Norton-Cruz produced <a href="https://vimeo.com/814699053">At Home/In Home: Rural Alaska Childcare in Crisis</a>, a documentary that would cause a stir up at Alaska’s state legislature.</p><figure class="wp-block-embed aligncenter is-type-video is-provider-vimeo wp-block-embed-vimeo"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
  293. <iframe title="At Home / In Home: Rural Alaska Childcare in Crisis" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/814699053?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963" width="780" height="411" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write; encrypted-media"></iframe>
  294. </div></figure><p>It tells a story of parents who leave jobs because they can’t find child care, employers who can’t find workers, public officials who tally the economic damage of the child care crisis, and an intrepid mother-daughter pair–Tracey and Bailey Schaeffer<strong>–</strong>who battle the state child care licensing system as they try to establish a home-based child care facility.</p><p>The film is a portrait of small-town families–where, for example, a 55-year-old grandmother would like to return to her job and earn a retirement pension, but instead is home raising five grandkids.&nbsp;</p><p>It’s also a story of how bureaucratic barriers and the realities of rural infrastructure–homes that don’t meet state licensing requirements or lack of reliable internet service–prevent qualified caregivers from getting licensed.&nbsp;</p><p>That’s the story that hooked state representative Julie Coulombe when she watched the film at a legislators’ lunch-and-learn where Norton-Cruz presented the film. “A lot of times when we’re talking about bills and issues in the legislature, there’s no human face to it,” said Coulombe.</p><p>“But Laura’s film lets real Alaskans tell their stories. She showed the complicated logistics, the hard work, of taking care of children. Seeing that, I just felt sheer frustration. I mean, these women want to take care of children in a place where it’s almost impossible to find child care, and they can’t even get over the first hurdle, which is paperwork. That kind of frustration drives me to action. It motivated me to want to change the system.”</p><p>According to a <a href="https://health.alaska.gov/Commissioner/Documents/PDF/Child%20Care%20Task%20Force%20Report%202024.pdf">December, 2024 report</a> from the Alaska Governor’s Task Force on Child Care, 61% of Alaskans have limited or no access to licensed child care facilities, even though more than half of young children live in households where all parents are employed and need child care.&nbsp;</p><p>Norton-Cruz noted that the <a href="https://alaskabeacon.com/2023/06/30/would-be-child-care-providers-in-remote-alaska-say-its-all-but-impossible-to-get-a-state-license/">regulations for home-based care are typically based on center-based care in more urban settings</a>. “They’re not created with homes in mind, and certainly not rural homes in Alaska which are often intergenerational,” she said. “People heat with wood stoves or propane that doesn’t meet the safety regulations. To get licensed, the child care provider has to have a Child Development Associates credential (CDA), which requires unpaid, supervised hours from someone who already has that degree in a licensed center.”</p><p>That translates to a person from Kotzebue having to make a trip to one of the major cities, hundreds of miles away, in order to stay there long enough to meet the requirement. For most people interested in operating their own child care business it’s an impossible proposition.&nbsp;</p><figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" width="780" height="585" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Laura-Norton-Cruz-at-work.jpeg?resize=780%2C585&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-226867" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Laura-Norton-Cruz-at-work-scaled.jpeg?resize=1296%2C972&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Laura-Norton-Cruz-at-work-scaled.jpeg?resize=760%2C570&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Laura-Norton-Cruz-at-work-scaled.jpeg?resize=768%2C576&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Laura-Norton-Cruz-at-work-scaled.jpeg?resize=1536%2C1152&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Laura-Norton-Cruz-at-work-scaled.jpeg?resize=2048%2C1536&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Laura-Norton-Cruz-at-work-scaled.jpeg?resize=1200%2C900&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Laura-Norton-Cruz-at-work-scaled.jpeg?resize=800%2C600&amp;ssl=1 800w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Laura-Norton-Cruz-at-work-scaled.jpeg?resize=600%2C450&amp;ssl=1 600w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Laura-Norton-Cruz-at-work-scaled.jpeg?resize=400%2C300&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Laura-Norton-Cruz-at-work-scaled.jpeg?resize=200%2C150&amp;ssl=1 200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Laura-Norton-Cruz-at-work-scaled.jpeg?resize=1024%2C768&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Laura-Norton-Cruz-at-work-scaled.jpeg?resize=1568%2C1176&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Laura-Norton-Cruz-at-work-scaled.jpeg?resize=2000%2C1500&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Laura-Norton-Cruz-at-work-scaled.jpeg?resize=706%2C530&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Laura-Norton-Cruz-at-work-scaled.jpeg?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Laura-Norton-Cruz-at-work-1296x972.jpeg?w=370&amp;ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Laura Norton-Cruz working in the Alaska snow. (Photo by Laura Norton-Cruz)</figcaption></figure><p>When Representative Coulombe learned about these barriers, she felt so frustrated that she sponsored another screening to draw attention to the child care crisis and its impact on the state’s economy. Ultimately, Coulombe sponsored a bill that resulted in a <a href="https://www.adn.com/business-economy/2024/07/28/alaska-child-care-advocates-hope-new-law-and-75-million-in-subsidies-will-help-beleaguered-sector/">$7 million increase for child care funding</a> to <a href="https://health.alaska.gov/dpa/Pages/ccare/ccare_grant.aspx">increase provider wages</a> and expand access to subsidies for middle-income families.</p><p>Pressure from the public, from legislators like Coulombe, and child care advocates including Norton-Cruz, prompted the governor to set up the Alaska Child Care Task Force. Eventually the Department of Health Commissioner viewed Norton-Cruz’s film and, with input from the Task Force, the agency which oversees state licensing regulations, which had originally declined to answer questions put forward in the documentary, also saw the film. They are now revamping their website, and have changed the IT system that prevented rural users (without expensive fixed IP addresses) from registering and requesting a background check.&nbsp;</p><p>As a result of these changes, the Schaeffers were able to open <a href="https://www.nwanunakins.com/about">Nunakins</a>, a non-profit early learning program on the second floor of Bailey’s house. Two years later, it’s still the only licensed <a href="https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/rural-alaska/2023/05/07/mother-daughter-duo-to-open-kotzebues-only-licensed-child-care-facility-amid-alaska-shortage/">home-based child care</a> in Kotzebue. They serve 8 children, are assisting staff in getting their CDAs, and have a waiting list of more than twenty 0-5 year olds. “We’re still open,” said Tracey Schaeffer, who handles the books for the business. “But financially this is not really sustainable. Utilities are so expensive here. A gallon of milk costs $12, gas and heating fuel are $9 a gallon. Then there’s worker’s comp and liability insurance. I’d have to charge families more than $2000 a month to cover the <a href="https://ddaalaska.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/MRG-Alaska-True-Cost-of-Child-Care-Final.pdf">cost of care</a>, but the subsidy only pays $1500 for an infant, so that’s what I charge.”</p><p>Tracey Schaeffer, who is also the clinical coordinator for the <a href="https://www.nwabor.org/government/about/">Northwest Arctic Borough</a> that provides essential services to Kotzebue and the surrounding 10 villages, also participates in a community Child Care Working Group.&nbsp;</p><p>“Our focus is on stimulating community development,” she said. “We want workers to be able to stay in this area. Also, we want kids who go into foster care to be able to stay here near their families, their culture, their language. To do that foster families have to be able to have child care. For a lot of people, this is home. We need to make it a place where people can stay and thrive.”&nbsp;</p><p>Recently, the Alaska Child Care Task Force, recognizing the acute child care crisis in rural areas where there are few centers, has recommended expanding “licensed exempt provider types” that are eligible for subsidies, so that a family that is eligible for&nbsp; the state subsidy can select a family, friend, or neighbor as their child care provider.&nbsp;</p><p>Even amongst her Anchorage constituents,“It’s really clear that most parents prefer in-home child care, a smaller setting with a relative or friend or a neighbor,” said Representative Coulombe. It’s an observation backed up by <a href="https://homegrownchildcare.org/_resources/home-based-child-care-fact-sheet/">data from Home Grown</a>, an organization that advocates for home-based child care providers. Licensed home-based care is also an option that <a href="https://hechingerreport.org/in-home-child-care-could-be-solution-for-rural-working-parents/">often works best in rural areas</a> where residents must travel long distances to get to urban centers.&nbsp;</p><p>Coulombe is continuing to press for improvements in both the licensing process and the subsidy system, including tax credits for businesses that provide child care benefits. “People are starting to wake up,” she said. “Do you want to keep and retain workers? If you have a child care benefit attached to your job, you’ll be loyal. If you have safe, affordable care for your child, you don’t move away and you don’t quit your job.”</p><p>Meanwhile, Norton-Cruz is documenting it all, filming child care workers in the rural Kenai peninsula and an infant-learning program in the Mat-Su region of Alaska, which focuses particularly on Alaska Native communities. “We have to keep paying attention to this issue and keep the pressure on,” she said. “Because that’s what leads to changes in funding and changes in policy. We need to help employers, legislators, and leaders see that this is the most important part of child development and the most abandoned policy issue of our time.”&nbsp;</p><hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-dots"/><p><strong>You can watch </strong><a href="https://vimeo.com/814699053"><strong>At Home/In Home: Rural Alaska Childcare in Crisis</strong></a><strong> free on Vimeo.</strong></p><p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/in-rural-alaska-a-powerful-documentary-flips-the-script-for-child-care-funding/2025/03/19/">In Rural Alaska, A Powerful Documentary Flips the Script for Child Care Funding</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  295. ]]></content:encoded>
  297. <wfw:commentRss>https://dailyyonder.com/in-rural-alaska-a-powerful-documentary-flips-the-script-for-child-care-funding/2025/03/19/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  298. <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
  301. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">226804</post-id> </item>
  302. <item>
  303. <title>Report: Data From Funeral Homes Can Serve as an Early Warning Sign of Health Emergencies</title>
  304. <link>https://dailyyonder.com/report-data-from-funeral-homes-can-serve-as-early-an-warning-sign-of-health-emergencies/2025/03/18/</link>
  305. <comments>https://dailyyonder.com/report-data-from-funeral-homes-can-serve-as-early-an-warning-sign-of-health-emergencies/2025/03/18/#respond</comments>
  307. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Liz Carey]]></dc:creator>
  308. <pubDate>Tue, 18 Mar 2025 10:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
  309. <category><![CDATA[Health]]></category>
  310. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://dailyyonder.com/?p=226886</guid>
  311.  
  312. <description><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="683" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/6038042008_c1b8d3f025_k.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/6038042008_c1b8d3f025_k.jpg?w=2048&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/6038042008_c1b8d3f025_k.jpg?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/6038042008_c1b8d3f025_k.jpg?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/6038042008_c1b8d3f025_k.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/6038042008_c1b8d3f025_k.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/6038042008_c1b8d3f025_k.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/6038042008_c1b8d3f025_k.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/6038042008_c1b8d3f025_k.jpg?resize=1568%2C1045&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/6038042008_c1b8d3f025_k.jpg?resize=2000%2C1333&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/6038042008_c1b8d3f025_k.jpg?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/6038042008_c1b8d3f025_k.jpg?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/6038042008_c1b8d3f025_k.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure>
  313. <p>A new study has found that rural county health officials can use information from funeral homes and obituaries to identify community health emergencies. The study, published in the Journal of Appalachian Health, looked at public funeral and obituary listings to identify spikes in excess mortality. What Dr. Randy Wykoff, East Tennessee State University’s Dean of [&#8230;]</p>
  314. <p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/report-data-from-funeral-homes-can-serve-as-early-an-warning-sign-of-health-emergencies/2025/03/18/">Report: Data From Funeral Homes Can Serve as an Early Warning Sign of Health Emergencies</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  315. ]]></description>
  316. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="683" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/6038042008_c1b8d3f025_k.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/6038042008_c1b8d3f025_k.jpg?w=2048&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/6038042008_c1b8d3f025_k.jpg?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/6038042008_c1b8d3f025_k.jpg?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/6038042008_c1b8d3f025_k.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/6038042008_c1b8d3f025_k.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/6038042008_c1b8d3f025_k.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/6038042008_c1b8d3f025_k.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/6038042008_c1b8d3f025_k.jpg?resize=1568%2C1045&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/6038042008_c1b8d3f025_k.jpg?resize=2000%2C1333&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/6038042008_c1b8d3f025_k.jpg?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/6038042008_c1b8d3f025_k.jpg?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/6038042008_c1b8d3f025_k.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure><p>A new study has found that rural county health officials can use information from funeral homes and obituaries to identify community health emergencies.</p><p>The study,<a href="https://uknowledge.uky.edu/jah/"> </a><a href="https://uknowledge.uky.edu/jah/vol6/iss3/2/">published in the Journal of Appalachian Health</a>, looked at public funeral and obituary listings to identify spikes in excess mortality. What Dr. Randy Wykoff, East Tennessee State University’s Dean of Public Health, and his team found was that information from those sources can serve as an “early warning sign” to public health emergencies in rural communities.</p><p>“If I was still a local health officer, I would simply count the newspaper obituaries every month and create an ‘expected’ number of deaths, for each month,” Wykoff said in an interview with the Daily Yonder. “Then, in the unfortunate circumstance that there were more deaths than expected, I would know, in a matter of one month, that these deaths had occurred and then look into why.”</p><p>Looking at state health department records, funeral-home listings, and local newspaper obituaries in Washington County, Tennessee, between 2017 and 2019, researchers were able to predict the number of deaths by month for 2020. Calculating the excess number of deaths over and above the amount expected gave researchers insight into when Covid-19 deaths actually started to show up in that county.</p><p>Researchers found that there were twice as many excess deaths in the county compared to the official number of deaths attributed to Covid. Although the first official Covid death wasn’t recorded until early summer, the data showed excess deaths in the county much earlier, Wykoff said.</p><p>“(The) other thing that was quite surprising was that the first official Covid death in Washington County was in early July, and yet, we had had almost 100 excess deaths by that point,” he said. “Had someone been doing this in real-time, they would have said, ‘My gosh, in February, March, April, we really were already seeing excess deaths from Covid in Washington County.’”</p><p>Dr. Megan Quinn, lead researcher on the report, said the discrepancy could have been caused by a number of Covid-related reasons – medical personnel not diagnosing Covid, patients not being tested for Covid, or patients dying from other things after their initial Covid diagnosis, or people delaying care. But having the excess death information, she said, would have provided county health officials with critical information about what was going on in their communities.</p><p>“I think one of the things that&#8217;s so valuable with this, as with any piece of data, is that we can use it to understand our communities better,” she told the Daily Yonder. “This is just one way of looking at an early warning signal of what might be going on that we may not be seeing through other data mechanisms, and although it&#8217;s a kind of unique and different way of looking at things… it&#8217;s important, especially given the delays in data.”</p><p>Using the publicly available data can reveal excess deaths much faster than official statistics, the researchers said. For example, death data from state sources was not available until October of the following year, the researchers found. Although obituaries and funeral home notices don’t give specific causes of death in some cases, health officials can still use them to note unexpected increases.</p><p>“It&#8217;s just an early warning system that something is going on,” Wykoff said. “If you&#8217;re camping out in the woods, and you put a string with a bunch of tin cans on it, and you hear the cans rattling, you’re not sure what&#8217;s out there but you know there&#8217;s something, right? That’s the same thought here.”</p><p>Wykoff said county health officials can create a historical month-by-month registry of the number of deaths in their region and use that information to assess if there is an early indication something in their area has changed.</p><p>The researchers said they will be using the same methodology to identify excess deaths that will occur over the next few years as a result of the long-term impacts of Hurricane Helene.</p><p>For Wykoff, the data is an important yet inexpensive way for county health officials to save lives.</p><p>&nbsp;“I believe that it should be one of the most important articles I have published in my career,” he said.</p><hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-dots"/><p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/report-data-from-funeral-homes-can-serve-as-early-an-warning-sign-of-health-emergencies/2025/03/18/">Report: Data From Funeral Homes Can Serve as an Early Warning Sign of Health Emergencies</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  317. ]]></content:encoded>
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  320. <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
  323. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">226886</post-id> </item>
  324. <item>
  325. <title>Slim Margins, Climate Disasters, and Trump’s Funding Freeze: Life or Death for Many US Farms</title>
  326. <link>https://dailyyonder.com/slim-margins-climate-disasters-and-trumps-funding-freeze-life-or-death-for-many-us-farms/2025/03/18/</link>
  327. <comments>https://dailyyonder.com/slim-margins-climate-disasters-and-trumps-funding-freeze-life-or-death-for-many-us-farms/2025/03/18/#respond</comments>
  329. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Ayurella Horn-Muller and Naveena Sadasivam]]></dc:creator>
  330. <pubDate>Tue, 18 Mar 2025 09:59:00 +0000</pubDate>
  331. <category><![CDATA[Agriculture]]></category>
  332. <category><![CDATA[Government & Policy]]></category>
  333. <category><![CDATA[repub]]></category>
  334. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://dailyyonder.com/?p=226831</guid>
  335.  
  336. <description><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="683" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25064559780100-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25064559780100-scaled.jpg?w=2560&amp;ssl=1 2560w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25064559780100-scaled.jpg?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25064559780100-scaled.jpg?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25064559780100-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25064559780100-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25064559780100-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1366&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25064559780100-scaled.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25064559780100-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25064559780100-scaled.jpg?resize=1568%2C1046&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25064559780100-scaled.jpg?resize=2000%2C1334&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25064559780100-scaled.jpg?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25064559780100-scaled.jpg?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25064559780100-scaled.jpg?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25064559780100-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure>
  337. <p>This story was originally published by Grist. When the Trump administration first announced a freeze on all federal funding in January, farmers across the country were thrust into an uncertain limbo.&#160; More than a month later, fourth-generation farmer Adam Chappell continues to wait on the U.S. Department of Agriculture to reimburse him for the $25,000 [&#8230;]</p>
  338. <p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/slim-margins-climate-disasters-and-trumps-funding-freeze-life-or-death-for-many-us-farms/2025/03/18/">Slim Margins, Climate Disasters, and Trump’s Funding Freeze: Life or Death for Many US Farms</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  339. ]]></description>
  340. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="683" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25064559780100-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25064559780100-scaled.jpg?w=2560&amp;ssl=1 2560w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25064559780100-scaled.jpg?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25064559780100-scaled.jpg?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25064559780100-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25064559780100-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25064559780100-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1366&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25064559780100-scaled.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25064559780100-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25064559780100-scaled.jpg?resize=1568%2C1046&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25064559780100-scaled.jpg?resize=2000%2C1334&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25064559780100-scaled.jpg?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25064559780100-scaled.jpg?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25064559780100-scaled.jpg?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25064559780100-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure><p class="has-text-align-center"><em>This story was originally published by <a href="https://grist.org/food-and-agriculture/trump-funding-freeze-usda-us-farms/">Grist</a></em>.</p><p>When the Trump administration first announced a freeze on all federal funding in January, farmers across the country were thrust into an uncertain limbo.&nbsp;</p><p>More than a month later, fourth-generation farmer Adam Chappell continues to wait on the U.S. Department of Agriculture to reimburse him for the $25,000 he paid out of pocket to implement conservation practices like cover cropping. Until he knows the fate of the federal programs that keep his small rice farm in Arkansas afloat, Chappell’s unable to prepare for his next crop. Things have gotten so bad, the 45-year-old is even considering leaving the only job he’s ever known. “I just don’t know who we can count on and if we can count on them as a whole to get it done,” said Chappell. “That’s what I’m scared of.”&nbsp;</p><p>In Virginia, the funding freeze has forced a sustainable farming network that supports small farmers throughout the state to suspend operations. Brent Wills, a livestock producer and program manager at the Virginia Association for Biological Farming, said that nearly all of the organization’s funding comes from USDA programs that have been frozen or rescinded. The team of three is now scrambling to come up with a contingency plan while trying not to panic over whether the nearly $50,000 in grants they are owed will be reimbursed.&nbsp;</p><p>“It’s pretty devastating,” said Wills. “The short-term effects of this are bad enough, but the long-term effects? We can’t even tally that up right now.”&nbsp;</p><p>In North Carolina, a beekeeping operation hasn’t yet received the $14,500 in emergency funding from the USDA to rebuild after Hurricane Helene washed away 60 beehives. Ang Roell, who runs They Keep Bees, an apiary that also has operations in Florida and Massachusetts, said they have more than $45,000 in USDA grants that are frozen. The delay has put them behind in production, leading to an additional $15,000 in losses. They are also unsure of the future of an additional $100,000 in grants that they’ve applied for. “I have to rethink my entire business plan,” Roell said. “I feel shell-shocked.”</p><p>Within the USDA’s purview, the funding freeze has targeted two main categories of funding: grant applications that link agricultural work to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and those enacted under the Inflation Reduction Act, which earmarked more than <a href="https://sustainableagriculture.net/blog/trump-denies-over-2-billion-in-payments-owed-to-30000-farmers/">$19.5 billion</a> to be paid out over several years. Added to the uncertainty of the funding freeze, among the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/when-will-mass-us-government-firings-show-up-data-2025-02-25/">tens of thousands of federal employees</a> who have lost their jobs in recent weeks were officials who manage various USDA programs.</p><p>Following the initial freeze, courts have repeatedly ordered the administration to grant access to all funds, but agencies have taken a piecemeal approach, releasing funding in “tranches.” Even as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Interior have released significant chunks of funding, the USDA has moved slowly, citing the need to review programs with IRA funding. In some cases, though, <a href="https://civileats.com/food-policy-tracker/#exclusive-doge-cancels-contract-that-enables-farmer-payments-despite-0-savings">it has terminated contracts altogether</a>, including those with ties to the agency’s largest-ever investment in climate-smart agriculture.&nbsp;</p><p>In late February, the USDA announced that it was <a href="https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/press-releases/2025/02/20/secretary-rollins-releases-first-tranche-funding-under-review#:~:text=Specifically%2C%20USDA%20is%20releasing%20approximatelynation%2C%E2%80%9D%20said%20Secretary%20Rollins.">releasing $20 million</a> to farmers who had already been awarded grants — the agency’s first tranche.&nbsp;</p><p>According to Mike Lavender, policy director with the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, that $20 million amounts to “less than one percent” of money owed. <a href="https://sustainableagriculture.net/blog/trump-denies-over-2-billion-in-payments-owed-to-30000-farmers/">His team estimates</a> that three IRA-funded programs have legally promised roughly $2.3 billion through 30,715 conservation contracts for ranchers, farmers, and foresters. Those contracts have been through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, Conservation Stewardship Program, and Agricultural Conservation Easement Program. “In some respects, it’s a positive sign that some of it’s been released,” said Lavender. “But I think, more broadly, it’s so insignificant. For the vast majority, [this] does absolutely nothing.”</p><p>A week later, USDA secretary Brooke Rollins announced that the agency would be able to meet a March 21 deadline imposed by Congress to distribute an additional $10 billion in emergency relief payments.</p><p>Then, on Sunday, March 2, Rollins made an announcement that offered hope for some farmers, but very little specifics. In a <a href="https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/USDAOC/bulletins/3d50df4">press statement</a>, the USDA stated that the agency’s review of IRA funds had been completed and funds associated with EQIP, CSP, and ACEP would be released, but it did not clarify how much would be unfrozen. The statement also announced a commitment to distribute an additional $20 billion in disaster assistance.&nbsp;</p><p>Lavender called Rollins’ statement a “borderline nothingburger” for its degree of “ambiguity.” It’s not clear, he continued, if Rollins is referring to the first tranche of funding or if the statement was announcing a second tranche — nor, if it’s the latter, how much is being released. “Uncertainty still seems to reign supreme. We need more clarity.”&nbsp;</p><p>The USDA did not respond to Grist’s request for clarification.&nbsp;</p><p>Farmers who identify as women, queer, or people of color are especially apprehensive about the status of their contracts. Roell, the beekeeper, said their applications for funding celebrated their operations’ diverse workforce development program. Now, Roell, who uses they/them pronouns, fears that their existing contracts and pending applications will be targeted for the same reason. (Federal agencies have been following <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-radical-and-wasteful-government-dei-programs-and-preferencing/">an executive order</a> taking aim at “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs.”)&nbsp;</p><p>“This feels like an outright assault on sustainable agriculture, on small businesses, queer people, BIPOC, and women farmers,” said Roell. “Because at this point, all of our projects are getting flagged as DEI. We don’t know if we’re allowed to make corrections to those submissions or if they’re just going to get outright denied due to the language in the projects being for women or for queer folks.”</p><p>The knock-on effects of this funding gridlock on America’s already fractured agricultural economy has Rebecca Wolf, senior food policy analyst at Food &amp; Water Watch, deeply concerned. With the strain of an <a href="https://grist.org/food-and-agriculture/climate-takes-its-toll-on-the-cherry-capital-of-the-world/">agricultural recession</a> looming over regions like the Midwest, and the number of U.S. farms <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/number-us-farms-falls-size-increases-census-shows-2024-02-13/">already in steady decline</a>, she sees the freeze and ongoing mass layoffs of federal employees as “ultimately leading down the road to further consolidation.” Given that the administration is “intentionally dismantling the programs that help underpin our small and medium-sized farmers,” Wolf said this could lead to “the loss of those farms, and then the loss of land ownership.”&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p>Other consequences might be more subtle, but no less significant. According to Omanjana Goswami, a soil scientist with the advocacy nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists, the funding freeze, layoffs, and the Trump administration’s hostility toward climate action is altogether likely to position America’s agricultural sector to contribute even more than it does to carbon emissions.&nbsp;</p><p>Agriculture accounted for about <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/charts-of-note/chart-detail?chartId=108623">10.6 percent</a> of U.S. carbon emissions in 2021. When farmers implement conservation practices on their farms, it can lead to improved air and water quality and increase soil’s ability to store carbon. Such tactics can not only <a href="https://grist.org/food-and-agriculture/can-we-eat-our-way-out-of-the-climate-crisis/">reduce agricultural emissions,</a> but are incentivized by many of the programs now under review. “When we look at the scale of this, it’s massive,” said Goswami. “If this funding is scaled back, or even completely removed, it means that the impact and contribution of agriculture on climate change is going to increase.”</p><p>The Trump administration’s attack on farmers comes at a time when the agriculture industry faces multiple existential crises. For one, times are tight for farmers. In 2023, the median household income from farming was negative $900. That means, at least half of all households that drew income from farming didn’t turn a profit.&nbsp;</p><p>Additionally, in 2023, natural disasters caused nearly $22 billion in agricultural losses. Rising temperatures are slowing plant growth, frequent floods and droughts are decimating harvests, and wildfires are burning through fields. With insurance paying for only a subset of these losses, farmers are increasingly paying out of pocket. Last year, extreme weather impacts, rising labor and production costs, imbalances in global supply and demand, and increased price volatility all resulted in <a href="https://grist.org/food-and-agriculture/climate-takes-its-toll-on-the-cherry-capital-of-the-world/">what some economists designated</a> the industry’s worst financial year in almost two decades.&nbsp;</p><p>Elliott Smith, whose Washington state-based business Kitchen Sync Strategies helps small farmers supply institutions like schools with fresh food, says this situation has totally changed how he looks at the federal government. As the freeze hampers key grants for the farmers and food businesses he works with across at least 10 different states, halting emerging contracts and stalling a slate of ongoing projects, Smith said the experience has made him now consider federal funding “unstable.”&nbsp;</p><p>All told, the freeze isn’t just threatening the future of Smith’s business, but also the future of farmers and the local food systems they work within nationwide. “The entire food ecosystem is stuck in place. The USDA feels like a troll that saw the sun. They are frozen. They can’t move,” he said. “The rest of us are in the fields and trenches, and we’re looking back at the government and saying, ‘Where the hell are you?’”</p><hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-dots"/><p></p><p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/slim-margins-climate-disasters-and-trumps-funding-freeze-life-or-death-for-many-us-farms/2025/03/18/">Slim Margins, Climate Disasters, and Trump’s Funding Freeze: Life or Death for Many US Farms</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  341. ]]></content:encoded>
  343. <wfw:commentRss>https://dailyyonder.com/slim-margins-climate-disasters-and-trumps-funding-freeze-life-or-death-for-many-us-farms/2025/03/18/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  344. <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
  347. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">226831</post-id> </item>
  348. <item>
  349. <title>GOP Cuts to Medicaid Could Threaten Rural Hospitals</title>
  350. <link>https://dailyyonder.com/gop-cuts-to-medicaid-could-threaten-rural-hospitals/2025/03/17/</link>
  351. <comments>https://dailyyonder.com/gop-cuts-to-medicaid-could-threaten-rural-hospitals/2025/03/17/#comments</comments>
  353. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Sarah Melotte and Ilana Newman]]></dc:creator>
  354. <pubDate>Mon, 17 Mar 2025 10:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
  355. <category><![CDATA[Government & Policy]]></category>
  356. <category><![CDATA[Health]]></category>
  357. <category><![CDATA[Data]]></category>
  358. <category><![CDATA[Yonder Report]]></category>
  359. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://dailyyonder.com/?p=226959</guid>
  360.  
  361. <description><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="683" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25065699515180-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25065699515180-scaled.jpg?w=2560&amp;ssl=1 2560w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25065699515180-scaled.jpg?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25065699515180-scaled.jpg?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25065699515180-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25065699515180-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25065699515180-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25065699515180-scaled.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25065699515180-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25065699515180-scaled.jpg?resize=1568%2C1045&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25065699515180-scaled.jpg?resize=2000%2C1333&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25065699515180-scaled.jpg?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25065699515180-scaled.jpg?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25065699515180-scaled.jpg?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25065699515180-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure>
  362. <p>Southwest Memorial Hospital in Cortez, Colorado, received more than 59,000 patient visits last year. That’s enough to treat everyone in Cortez and surrounding Montezuma County twice. Staff call the small hospital a bedrock of both medical care and the local economy.&#160; But warnings that the Republican-controlled federal government might cut Medicaid funding have community members [&#8230;]</p>
  363. <p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/gop-cuts-to-medicaid-could-threaten-rural-hospitals/2025/03/17/">GOP Cuts to Medicaid Could Threaten Rural Hospitals</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  364. ]]></description>
  365. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="683" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25065699515180-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25065699515180-scaled.jpg?w=2560&amp;ssl=1 2560w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25065699515180-scaled.jpg?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25065699515180-scaled.jpg?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25065699515180-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25065699515180-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25065699515180-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25065699515180-scaled.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25065699515180-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25065699515180-scaled.jpg?resize=1568%2C1045&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25065699515180-scaled.jpg?resize=2000%2C1333&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25065699515180-scaled.jpg?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25065699515180-scaled.jpg?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25065699515180-scaled.jpg?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AP25065699515180-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure><p>Southwest Memorial Hospital in Cortez, Colorado, received more than 59,000 patient visits last year. That’s enough to treat everyone in Cortez and surrounding Montezuma County twice.</p><p>Staff call the small hospital a bedrock of both medical care and the local economy.&nbsp;</p><p>But warnings that the Republican-controlled federal government might cut Medicaid funding have community members worried about the facility&#8217;s future.&nbsp;</p><p>They are not alone. Nationally, health policy experts warn that any cuts to Medicaid are likely to cause more trouble for rural hospitals than urban ones. That’s due in part because rural residents are more likely to be enrolled in Medicaid</p><p>In Montezuma County, 36% of the population is <a href="https://hcpf.colorado.gov/sites/hcpf/files/Montezuma%20County%20Fact%20Sheet%202024.pdf">enrolled in Medicaid</a>, which is publicly supported medical insurance for lower-income Americans. Southwest Memorial Hospital, a nonprofit hospital, expects about $20.5 million to come from the Medicaid reimbursements in 2025. That’s nearly a quarter of their expected revenue for the year, according to CEO Joe Theine.&nbsp;</p><iframe title="Medicaid Enrollment Rates" aria-label="Map" id="datawrapper-chart-eAVmn" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/eAVmn/1/" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="width: 0; min-width: 100% !important; border: none;" height="500" data-external="1"></iframe><script type="text/javascript">!function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}}))}();
  366.  
  367. </script><p>If that revenue is threatened, the healthcare system would have a hard time adjusting without affecting the services they can offer.&nbsp;</p><p>Theine said that the hospital is planning for growth in 2025. But if Medicaid is cut, the hospital would have to consider their level of services, the same way a family would have to revise its spending if it lost a big part of its income.&nbsp;</p><p>“If [you] had a 25% reduction in household income, you have to make some different decisions other than just around the edges,&#8221; Theine said.</p><p>Any such changes could affect the community’s level of health services and the local economy.</p><p>The hospital employs nearly 500 locals, including employees with young families that support Cortez’s public schools, Theine said. “The ripples of a hospital in a rural community are many beyond just the health and wellbeing of the people we serve directly,” he said.&nbsp;</p><p>Medicaid reimbursement is a crucial part of Southwest Memorial’s funding, despite reimbursing less at lower rates than private insurance.&nbsp;</p><p>“If a patient comes in and has Medicaid as a pay source, even though it may pay less than the average cost for that service, it still is contributing to paying for that fixed cost of having the emergency room open,” said Theine, “If that same patient no longer has insurance and is unable to pay, we still take care of them. But now there&#8217;s nothing coming in that&#8217;s contributing to keeping all of those services available.”&nbsp;</p><h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>GOP Legislation Could Threaten Rural Healthcare Systems</strong></h3><p>A March 5 <a href="https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2025-03/61235-Boyle-Pallone.pdf">letter from the Congressional Budget Office</a> to two Democratic representatives said that House Republicans won’t be able to meet their budget target of $1.5 trillion in cuts without slashing Medicaid and Medicare.</p><p>Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said Medicaid was safe under Republican lawmakers, but the math doesn’t add up with Trump’s determination to drop the national deficit by more than $1 trillion, according to Democrats.</p><p>“There have been proposals around reducing or eliminating that federal match for [Medicaid] expansion populations,” said Carrie Cochran-McClain, chief policy officer of the <a href="https://www.ruralhealth.us/">National Rural Health Association</a>.</p><p>That match was part of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, which provides federal funds to states to expand eligibility for Medicaid to families that earn up to 38% above the federal poverty line. A later Supreme Court ruling made Medicaid expansion optional. Currently, all but 10 states have accepted federal funding and expanded Medicaid.</p><div class="wp-block-gutena-accordion gutena-accordion-block gutena-accordion-block-b53da5-15 is-layout-flow wp-block-accordion-is-layout-flow" data-single="true"><div class="wp-block-gutena-accordion-panel gutena-accordion-block__panel"><div class="wp-block-gutena-accordion-panel-title gutena-accordion-block__panel-title"><div class="gutena-accordion-block__panel-title-inner"><h1 class="wp-block-heading has-text-align-left" style="margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px"><strong>How Does Medicaid Reimbursement Work?</strong></h1><div class="trigger-up-down"><div class="horizontal"></div><div class="vertical"></div></div></div></div>
  368.  
  369. <div class="wp-block-gutena-accordion-panel-content gutena-accordion-block__panel-content"><div class="gutena-accordion-block__panel-content-inner"><p style="margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0">Every year, the federal government reimburses every state a percentage of their overall Medicaid costs under a formula called the <a href="https://www.kff.org/medicaid/state-indicator/federal-matching-rate-and-multiplier/?currentTimeframe=0&amp;sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D">Federal Medical Assistance Percentage, </a>commonly referred to as FMAP. The federal reimbursement rate, or F<a href="https://www.kff.org/medicaid/state-indicator/federal-matching-rate-and-multiplier/?currentTimeframe=0&amp;sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D">MAP, varies by state based on that state’s median income, with the lowest federal reimbursement rates set at 50%</a>.&nbsp;</p>
  370.  
  371. <p style="margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0"></p>
  372.  
  373. <p style="margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0">In Colorado and California, for example, the federal government issues a reimbursement rate of&nbsp; 50% of total Medicaid costs. But in states that have expanded Medicaid under the ACA, the federal government also reimburses them for 90% of the Medicaid costs of the expansion population. Colorado, along with 40 other states (including the District of Columbia), have expanded Medicaid under the ACA legislation.</p></div></div></div></div><p>According to a <a href="https://www.macpac.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Chapter-4-Annual-Analysis-of-Medicaid-DSH-Allotments-to-States.pdf">2023 </a>report from the <a href="https://www.macpac.gov/">Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission</a> (MACPAC), an organization that advises Congress on healthcare policy, hospitals in states that expanded Medicaid under the ACA don’t have as many uninsured patients as those that didn’t adopt expansion. Medicaid expansion can save hospitals money by increasing the share of its patients who are covered under some form of insurance.&nbsp;</p><p>An analysis of 600<a href="https://www.kff.org/medicaid/issue-brief/what-does-the-recent-literature-say-about-medicaid-expansion-economic-impacts-on-providers/"> research papers</a> on Medicaid found that expansion led to drops in the uninsured population and economic improvements for both states and healthcare providers. In the fiscal year 2020, the cost of uninsured care represented 2.7% of the total operating expenses in states that expanded Medicaid, compared to 7.3% in states that haven’t expanded.&nbsp;</p><p>Medicaid expansion under the ACA also means states can spend less money on mental health and substance use treatments because <a href="https://www.cbpp.org/research/health/medicaid-expansion-frequently-asked-questions-0">federal matches help pay for them</a>.&nbsp;</p><p>“States can come up with a number of different ways that they finance their Medicaid programs, and it varies across the board,” Cochran-McClain said. “They can use specific kinds of fees or taxes to help support the Medicaid program.”</p><p>Reducing or eliminating that federal match would leave states with the option to either reduce the number of Medicaid enrollees, or to come up with another method of funding care for the expansion population. But some states might not be able to make up the funds.</p><h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Rural Residents Are More Likely to Receive Medicaid</strong></h3><p>The loss of that federal money would be especially hard on rural health-care providers, Cochran-McLain said. That’s because a greater share of the rural population relies on Medicaid compared to urban and suburban areas.</p><iframe title="Percent of Residents on Medicaid" aria-label="Grouped Columns" id="datawrapper-chart-UKWg0" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/UKWg0/2/" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="width: 0; min-width: 100% !important; border: none;" height="492" data-external="1"></iframe><script type="text/javascript">!function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}}))}();
  374.  
  375. </script><p>Nonmetropolitan, or rural, counties have slightly higher Medicaid enrollment rates than metropolitan counties. Nationwide, 24% of residents in rural counties received Medicaid either alone or in combination with another health insurance method in 2023, compared to about 20% of the metropolitan population that year.&nbsp;</p><p>In Colorado, 23% of the nonmetropolitan population and 18% of the metropolitan population received Medicaid in 2023, according to a Daily Yonder analysis of Census data.</p><p>Of the 47 states that have nonmetropolitan counties, 43 of them have higher Medicaid enrollment rates in rural areas compared to metro ones.&nbsp;</p><iframe title="Medicaid Enrollment by State" aria-label="Table" id="datawrapper-chart-sFod1" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/sFod1/2/" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="width: 0; min-width: 100% !important; border: none;" height="740" data-external="1"></iframe><script type="text/javascript">!function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}}))}();
  376.  
  377. </script><p>“There is a really direct and strong relationship between Medicaid coverage levels and the financial viability of rural hospitals,”&nbsp; Cochran-McClain said. “In states that have expanded Medicaid, we saw an improved hospital performance, rural hospital performance and smaller rates of vulnerability for rural hospitals.”</p><p>Expanding Medicaid to include more low-income individuals saves states money by reducing the cost of providing care to the uninsured.&nbsp;</p><p>States that have not expanded Medicaid leave their rural healthcare systems more vulnerable to financial crises.</p><p>“Whether it’s Medicare or Medicaid, it’s a really important revenue source and source of coverage,” said Cochran-McClain.</p><h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>How Does Medicaid Work in Colorado?</strong></h3><p>Colorado lawmakers <a href="https://www.coloradohealthinstitute.org/research/medicaid-expansion-colorado#:~:text=Colorado%20lawmakers%20voted%20to%20expand,fund%20to%20pay%20for%20it.">voted to expand Medicaid coverage</a> in 2009, ahead of implementation of ACA. The state simultaneously created a hospital provider fee program that funds the state’s portion of Medicaid. In Colorado,&nbsp; the federal match rate comes to <a href="https://www.kff.org/medicaid/issue-brief/medicaid-financing-the-basics/">63.6%. The </a>hospital provider fees pay the rest..</p><p>Many states use provider taxes or fees to fund Medicaid programs at the state level. Colorado taxes hospitals and healthcare providers 5.5% of revenue (the fee cannot exceed 6%) with a program called the <a href="https://hcpf.colorado.gov/healthcare-affordability-and-sustainability-fee">Colorado Healthcare Affordability and Sustainability Enterprise (CHASE)</a>. That money is then matched by the federal government at 90%, as long as the population falls under the ACA expansion eligibility.</p><p>Colorado’s CHASE funds go to offsetting the difference between Medicaid reimbursement and the actual cost of a service. Medicaid typically reimburses a provider around 50% of cost, said Tom Rennell, senior vice president of financial policy and data analytics for Colorado Hospital Association.</p><p>Rennell said that CHASE “helps out our rural hospitals more than our urban hospitals. Our rural hospitals pay in less fees and our rural hospitals receive more of the distribution.”</p><p>Increasing taxes and fees from healthcare providers&nbsp; are one funding source that could help bridge the gap if federal funding is cut, said Rennell.&nbsp;</p><p>In Colorado, the state legislature has a constitutional requirement to have a balanced budget. That budget is currently facing a $1.2 billion deficit, some of which is caused by <a href="https://coloradosun.com/2025/02/21/colorado-state-budget-hole-medicaid-costs-continue-to-climb/">rising Medicaid costs</a>. Colorado’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) <a href="https://www.bellpolicy.org/basic/colorados-tabor/">restricts government spending</a> to population growth plus inflation, meaning that any additional tax revenue over that formula is returned to taxpayers.&nbsp;</p><p>This means that even if the state has the revenue to balance the budget, it’s incredibly difficult to reallocate those funds to other programs, like Medicaid.&nbsp; Colorado voters have historically been very protective of TABOR refunds. Raising taxes to fund Medicaid is also not an option in Colorado under TABOR.&nbsp;</p><p>“The state&#8217;s already wrestling with a billion dollar shortfall in our upcoming year, and then add onto that potential additional shortfall from this federal funding. And those really start to add up to some real sizable impacts that the state is going to have to deal with,” said Rennell.&nbsp;</p><p>The Colorado Hospital Association estimated that <a href="https://cha.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/CO-Impact-of-Cuts.pdf">federal Medicaid cuts could cost the state</a> $27.2 billion over the next five years, depending on specific cuts.&nbsp;</p><p>Rennell sees the potential cuts affecting rural hospitals disproportionately. “This funding from the federal government is their lifeline. It is what keeps those rural hospitals operating. And if you cut the lifeline, they will have to make difficult choices.”&nbsp;</p><hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-dots"/><p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/gop-cuts-to-medicaid-could-threaten-rural-hospitals/2025/03/17/">GOP Cuts to Medicaid Could Threaten Rural Hospitals</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
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  381. <slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
  384. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">226959</post-id> </item>
  385. <item>
  386. <title>Millions in US Live in Places Where Doctors Don’t Practice and Telehealth Doesn’t Reach</title>
  387. <link>https://dailyyonder.com/millions-in-us-live-in-places-where-doctors-dont-practice-and-telehealth-doesnt-reach/2025/03/17/</link>
  388. <comments>https://dailyyonder.com/millions-in-us-live-in-places-where-doctors-dont-practice-and-telehealth-doesnt-reach/2025/03/17/#respond</comments>
  390. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Sarah Jane Tribble / KFF Health News and Holly K. Hacker / KFF Health News]]></dc:creator>
  391. <pubDate>Mon, 17 Mar 2025 09:59:00 +0000</pubDate>
  392. <category><![CDATA[Health]]></category>
  393. <category><![CDATA[repub]]></category>
  394. <category><![CDATA[Yonder Report]]></category>
  395. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://dailyyonder.com/?p=226902</guid>
  396.  
  397. <description><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="683" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-01_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-01_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?w=2560&amp;ssl=1 2560w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-01_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-01_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-01_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-01_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-01_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-01_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-01_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-01_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=1568%2C1045&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-01_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=2000%2C1333&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-01_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-01_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-01_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-01_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure>
  398. <p>This story was originally published by KFF Health News. Green lights flickered on the wireless router in Barbara Williams’ kitchen in Boligee, Alabama. Just one bar lit up — a weak signal connecting her to the world beyond her home in the Alabama Black Belt. Next to the router sat medications, vitamin D pills, and [&#8230;]</p>
  399. <p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/millions-in-us-live-in-places-where-doctors-dont-practice-and-telehealth-doesnt-reach/2025/03/17/">Millions in US Live in Places Where Doctors Don’t Practice and Telehealth Doesn’t Reach</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  400. ]]></description>
  401. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="683" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-01_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-01_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?w=2560&amp;ssl=1 2560w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-01_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-01_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-01_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-01_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-01_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-01_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-01_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-01_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=1568%2C1045&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-01_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=2000%2C1333&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-01_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-01_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-01_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-01_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure><p class="has-text-align-center"><em>This story was originally published by <a href="https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/dead-zone-sickest-counties-slow-internet-broadband-desert-health-care-provider-shortage/">KFF Health News</a></em>.</p><p>Green lights flickered on the wireless router in Barbara Williams’ kitchen in Boligee, Alabama. Just one bar lit up — a weak signal connecting her to the world beyond her home in the Alabama Black Belt.</p><p>Next to the router sat medications, vitamin D pills, and Williams’ blood glucose monitor kit.</p><p>“I haven’t used that thing in a month or so,” said Williams, 72, waving toward the kit. Diagnosed with diabetes more than six years ago, she has developed nerve pain from neuropathy in both legs.</p><p>Williams is one of nearly 3 million Americans who live in mostly rural counties that lack both health care and reliable high-speed internet, according to an analysis by KFF Health News, which showed that these people tend to live sicker and die younger than others in America.</p><p>Compared with those in other regions, patients across the rural South, Appalachia, and remote West are most often unable to make a video call to their doctor or log into their patient portals. Both are essential ways to participate in the U.S. medical system. And Williams is among those who can do neither.</p><figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
  402. <iframe title="Dead Zone: Doctor shortages and digital deserts intersect in America’s sickest counties" width="780" height="439" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1xHu8apHKcU?start=22&#038;feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
  403. </div></figure><p>This year, more than $42 billion allocated in the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is expected to begin flowing to states as part of a national “<a href="https://broadbandusa.ntia.gov/news/latest-news/biden-harris-administration-announces-state-allocations-4245-billion-high-speed">Internet for All</a>” initiative launched by the Biden administration. But the program faces uncertainty after Commerce Department Secretary Howard Lutnick&nbsp;<a href="https://www.commerce.gov/news/press-releases/2025/03/statement-us-secretary-commerce-howard-lutnick-bead-program">last week announced</a>&nbsp;a “rigorous review” asserting that the previous administration’s approach was full of “woke mandates.”</p><p>High rates of chronic illness and historical inequities are hallmarks of many of the more than 200 U.S. counties with poor services that KFF Health News identified. Dozens of doctors, academics, and advocates interviewed for this article unanimously agreed that limited internet service hinders medical care and access.</p><iframe title="Where Health Care Shortages and Broadband Deserts Intersect" aria-label="Map" id="datawrapper-chart-y94tf" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/y94tf/2/" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="width: 0; min-width: 100% !important; border: none;" height="566" data-external="1"></iframe><script type="text/javascript">!function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}}))}();
  404. </script><p>Without fast, reliable broadband, “all we’re going to do is widen health care disparities within telemedicine,” said Rashmi Mullur, an endocrinologist and chief of telehealth at VA Greater Los Angeles. Patients with diabetes who also use telemedicine are more likely to get care and control their blood sugar,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.aafp.org/pubs/afp/issues/2022/0300/p281.pdf">Mullur found</a>.</p><p>Diabetes requires constant management. Left untreated, uncontrolled blood sugar can cause blindness, kidney failure, nerve damage, and eventually death.</p><p>Williams, who sees a nurse practitioner at the county hospital in the next town, said she is not interested in using remote patient monitoring or video calls.</p><p>“I know how my sugar affects me,” Williams said. “I get a headache if it’s too high.” She gets weaker when it’s down, she said, and always carries snacks like crackers or peppermints.</p><p>Williams said she could even drink a soda pop — orange, grape — when her sugar is low but would not drink one when she felt it was high because she would get “kind of goozie-woozy.”</p><figure class="wp-block-image alignwide size-large"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" width="780" height="520" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-03_3840x2560web.webp?resize=780%2C520&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-226905" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-03_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-03_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-03_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-03_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-03_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-03_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-03_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-03_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=1568%2C1045&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-03_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=2000%2C1333&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-03_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-03_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-03_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-03_3840x2560web-1296x864.webp?w=370&amp;ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Barbara Williams pricks her finger using a home blood glucose monitoring kit. Williams monitors her blood sugar levels and says she can feel when her sugar is high or low. (Photo by Andi Rice / KFF Health News)</figcaption></figure><h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>‘This Is America’</strong></h3><p>Connectivity dead zones persist in American life despite at least $115 billion lawmakers have thrown toward fixing the inequities. Federal broadband efforts are fragmented and overlapping, with more than 133 funding programs administered by 15 agencies, according to a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-23-106818.pdf">2023 federal report</a>.</p><p>“This is America. It’s not supposed to be this way,” said Karthik Ganesh, chief executive of Tampa, Florida-based OnMed, a telehealth company that in September installed a walk-in booth at the Boligee Community Center about 10 minutes from Williams’ home. Residents can call up free life-size video consultations with an OnMed health care provider and use equipment to check their weight and blood pressure.</p><p>OnMed, which partnered with local universities and the Alabama Cooperative Extension System, relies on SpaceX’s Starlink to provide a high-speed connection in lieu of other options.</p><div class="wp-block-jetpack-slideshow aligncenter" data-effect="slide"><div class="wp-block-jetpack-slideshow_container swiper-container"><ul class="wp-block-jetpack-slideshow_swiper-wrapper swiper-wrapper"><li class="wp-block-jetpack-slideshow_slide swiper-slide"><figure><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" width="780" height="520" alt="" class="wp-block-jetpack-slideshow_image wp-image-226908" data-id="226908" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-07_3840x2560web-1.webp?resize=780%2C520&#038;ssl=1" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-07_3840x2560web-1.webp?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-07_3840x2560web-1.webp?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-07_3840x2560web-1.webp?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-07_3840x2560web-1.webp?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-07_3840x2560web-1.webp?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-07_3840x2560web-1.webp?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-07_3840x2560web-1.webp?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-07_3840x2560web-1.webp?w=1536&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-07_3840x2560web-1-1296x864.webp?w=370&amp;ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" /><figcaption class="wp-block-jetpack-slideshow_caption gallery-caption">Greene County resident Samuel Knott tests the OnMed booth during a community event in September. Knott said the booth was “fast and everything” and he planned to use it when he didn’t want to drive “all the way” to his primary care provider (Photo by Sarah Jane Tribble / KFF Health News)</figcaption></figure></li><li class="wp-block-jetpack-slideshow_slide swiper-slide"><figure><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" width="780" height="520" alt="" class="wp-block-jetpack-slideshow_image wp-image-226909" data-id="226909" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-09_3840x2560web-1.webp?resize=780%2C520&#038;ssl=1" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-09_3840x2560web-1.webp?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-09_3840x2560web-1.webp?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-09_3840x2560web-1.webp?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-09_3840x2560web-1.webp?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-09_3840x2560web-1.webp?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-09_3840x2560web-1.webp?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-09_3840x2560web-1.webp?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-09_3840x2560web-1.webp?w=1536&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-09_3840x2560web-1-1296x864.webp?w=370&amp;ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" /><figcaption class="wp-block-jetpack-slideshow_caption gallery-caption">Boligee Mayor Hattie Samuels says the tiny rural community needs more health care, especially for older residents. She says the OnMed virtual walk-in booth is “truly a blessing.” (Photo by Andi Rice / KFF Health News)</figcaption></figure></li></ul><a class="wp-block-jetpack-slideshow_button-prev swiper-button-prev swiper-button-white" role="button"></a><a class="wp-block-jetpack-slideshow_button-next swiper-button-next swiper-button-white" role="button"></a><a aria-label="Pause Slideshow" class="wp-block-jetpack-slideshow_button-pause" role="button"></a><div class="wp-block-jetpack-slideshow_pagination swiper-pagination swiper-pagination-white"></div></div></div><div class="wp-block-group is-nowrap is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-is-layout-4 wp-block-group-is-layout-flex"><div class="wp-block-group is-nowrap is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-is-layout-3 wp-block-group-is-layout-flex"><p>A short drive from the community center, beyond Boligee’s Main Street with its deserted buildings and an empty railroad depot and down a long gravel drive, is the 22-acre property where Williams lives.</p></div></div><p>Last fall, Williams washed a dish in her kitchen, with its unforgiving linoleum-topped concrete floors. A few months earlier, she said, a man at the community center signed her up for “diabetic shoes” to help with her sore feet. They never arrived.</p><p>As Williams spoke, steam rose from a pot of boiling potatoes on the stove. Another pan sizzled with hamburger steak. And on a back burner simmered a mix of Velveeta cheese, diced tomatoes, and peppers.</p><p>She spent years on her feet as head cook at a diner in Cleveland, Ohio. The oldest of nine, Williams returned to her family home in Greene County more than 20 years ago to care for her mother and a sister, who both died from cancer in the back bedroom where she now sleeps.</p><figure class="wp-block-image alignwide size-large"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" width="780" height="520" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-04_3840x2560web.webp?resize=780%2C520&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-226910" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-04_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-04_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-04_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-04_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-04_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-04_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-04_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-04_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=1568%2C1045&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-04_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=2000%2C1333&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-04_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-04_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-04_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-04_3840x2560web-1296x864.webp?w=370&amp;ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Barbara Williams, the oldest of nine children, moved back to the family’s home decades ago to take care of her dying mother and sister. (Photo by Sarah Jane Tribble / KFF Health News)</figcaption></figure><p>Williams looked out a window and recalled when the landscape was covered in cotton that she once helped pick. Now three houses stand in a carefully tended clearing surrounded by tall trees. One belongs to a brother and the other to a sister who drives with her daily to the community center for exercise, prayers, and friendship with other seniors.</p><p>All the surviving siblings, Williams said, have diabetes. “I don’t know how we became diabetic,” she said. Neither of their parents had been diagnosed with the illness.</p><p>In Greene County, an estimated quarter of adults have diabetes — twice the national average. The county, which has about 7,600 residents, also has among the nation’s highest rates for several chronic diseases such as high blood pressure, stroke, and obesity, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data shows.</p><p>The county’s population is predominately Black. The federal CDC reports that Black Americans are&nbsp;<a href="https://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/diabetes-and-blackafrican-americans">more likely</a>&nbsp;to be diagnosed with diabetes and are 40% more likely than their white counterparts to die from the condition. And in the South, rural Black residents are more likely&nbsp;<a href="https://jointcenter.org/affordability-availability-expanding-broadband-in-the-black-rural-south/">to lack home internet access</a>, according to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a Washington-based think tank.</p><p>To identify counties most lacking in reliable broadband and health care providers, KFF Health News used data from the Federal Communications Commission and George Washington University’s Mullan Institute for Health Workforce Equity. Reporters also analyzed U.S. Census Bureau, CDC, and other data to understand the health status and demographics of those counties.</p><p>The analysis confirms that internet and care gaps are “hitting areas of extreme poverty and high social vulnerability,” said Clese Erikson, deputy director of the health workforce research center at the Mullan Institute.</p><h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Digital Haves vs. Have-Nots</strong></h3><p>Just over half of homes in Greene County have access to reliable high-speed internet — among the lowest rates in the nation. Greene County also has some of the country’s poorest residents, with a median household income of about $31,500. Average life expectancy is less than 72 years, below the national average.</p><iframe title="The 'Dead Zones' of Alabama" aria-label="Map" id="datawrapper-chart-QyJCP" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/QyJCP/16/" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="width: 0; min-width: 100% !important; border: none;" height="927" data-external="1"></iframe><script type="text/javascript">!function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r=0;r<e.length;r++)if(e[r].contentWindow===a.source){var i=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";e[r].style.height=i}}}))}();</script><p>By contrast, the KFF Health News analysis found that counties with the highest rates of internet access and health care providers correlated with higher life expectancy, less chronic disease, and key lifestyle factors such as higher incomes and education levels.</p><p>One of those is Howard County, Maryland, between Baltimore and Washington, D.C., where nearly all homes can connect to fast, reliable internet. The median household income is about $147,000 and average life expectancy is more than 82 years — a decade longer than in Greene County. A much smaller share of residents live with chronic conditions such as diabetes.</p><p>One is 78-year-old Sam Wilderson, a retired electrical engineer who has managed his Type 2 diabetes for more than a decade. He has fiber-optic internet at his home, which is a few miles from a cafe he dines at every week after Bible study. On a recent day, the cafe had a guest Wi-Fi download speed of 104 megabits per second and a 148 Mbps upload speed. The speeds are fast enough for remote workers to reliably take video calls.</p><p>Americans are demanding more speed than ever before. Most households have multiple devices — televisions, computers, gaming systems, doorbells — in addition to phones that can take up bandwidth. The more devices connected, the higher minimum speeds are needed to keep everything running smoothly.</p><p>To meet increasing needs, federal regulators updated the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.fierce-network.com/broadband/fcc-cranks-fixed-broadband-standard-notch">definition of broadband last year</a>, establishing standard speeds of 100/20 Mbps. Those speeds are typically enough for several users to stream, browse, download, and play games at the same time.</p><p>Christopher Ali, professor of telecommunications at Penn State, recommends minimum standard speeds of 100/100 Mbps. While download speeds enable consumption, such as streaming or shopping, fast upload speeds are necessary to participate in video calls, say, for work or telehealth.</p><p>At the cafe in Howard County, on a chilly morning last fall, Wilderson ordered a glass of white wine and his usual: three-seeded bread with spinach, goat cheese, smoked salmon, and over-easy eggs. After eating, Wilderson held up his wrist: “This watch allows me to track my diabetes without pricking my finger.”</p><p>Wilderson said he works with his doctors, feels young, and expects to live well into his 90s, just as his father and grandfather did.</p><p>Telehealth is crucial for people in areas with few or no medical providers, said Ry Marcattilio, an associate director of research at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. The national research and advocacy group works with communities on broadband access and reviewed KFF Health News’ findings.</p><p>High-speed internet makes it easier to use video visits for medical checkups, which most patients with diabetes need every three months.</p><p>Being connected “can make a huge difference in diabetes outcomes,” said Nestoras Mathioudakis, an endocrinologist and co-medical director of Johns Hopkins Medicine Diabetes &amp; Education Program, who treats patients in Howard County.</p><iframe title="What Speeds Are Needed for Telehealth?" aria-label="Table" id="datawrapper-chart-Wy76W" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/Wy76W/5/" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="width: 0; min-width: 100% !important; border: none;" height="540" data-external="1"></iframe><script type="text/javascript">!function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r=0;r<e.length;r++)if(e[r].contentWindow===a.source){var i=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";e[r].style.height=i}}}))}();</script><h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Paying More for Less</strong></h3><p>At Williams’ home in Alabama, pictures of her siblings and their kids cover the walls of the hallway and living room. A large, wood-framed image of Jesus at the Last Supper with his disciples hangs over her kitchen table.</p><p>Williams sat down as her pots simmered and sizzled. She wasn’t feeling quite right. “I had a glass of orange juice and a bag of potato chips, and I knew that wasn’t enough for breakfast, but I was cooking,” Williams said.</p><p>Every night Williams takes a pill to control her diabetes. In the morning, if she feels as if her sugar is dropping, she knows she needs to eat. So, that morning, she left the room to grab a peppermint, walking by the flickering wireless router.</p><p>The router’s download and upload speeds were 0.03/0.05 Mbps, nearly unusable by modern standards. Williams’ connection on her house phone can sound scratchy, and when she connects her cellphone to the router, it does not always work. Most days it’s just good enough for her to read a daily devotional website and check Facebook, though the stories don’t always load.</p><p>Rural residents like Williams&nbsp;<a href="https://dailyyonder.com/research-and-analysis-rural-internet-subscribers-pay-more-new-data-confirms/2023/11/28/">paid nearly $13 more a month</a>&nbsp;on average in late 2020 for slow internet connections than those in urban areas, according to Brian Whitacre, an agricultural economics professor at Oklahoma State University.</p><p>“You’re more likely to have competition in an urban area,” Whitacre said.</p><p>In rural Alabama, cellphone and internet options are limited. Williams pays $51.28 a month to her wireless provider, Ring Planet, which did not respond to calls and emails.</p><figure class="wp-block-image alignwide size-large"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" width="780" height="520" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-011_3840x2560web.webp?resize=780%2C520&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-226911" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-011_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-011_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-011_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-011_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-011_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-011_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-011_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-011_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=1568%2C1045&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-011_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=2000%2C1333&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-011_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-011_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-011_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-011_3840x2560web-1296x864.webp?w=370&amp;ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Once known for its busy railroad depot and cotton mills, the small town of Boligee, Alabama, sits nearly empty today. (Photo by Sarah Jane Tribble / KFF Health News)</figcaption></figure><p>In Howard County, Maryland, national fiber-optic broadband provider Verizon Communications faces competition from Comcast, a hybrid fiber-optic and cable provider. Verizon advertises a home internet plan promising speeds of 300/300 Mbps starting at $35 a month for its existing mobile customers. The company also offers a discounted price as low as $20 a month for customers who participate in certain federal assistance programs.</p><p>“Internet service providers look at the economics of going into some of these communities and there just isn’t enough purchasing power in their minds to warrant the investment,” said Ross DeVol, chief executive of Heartland Forward, a nonpartisan think tank based in Bentonville, Arkansas, that specializes in state and local economic development.</p><p>Conexon, a fiber-optic cable construction company, estimates it costs $25,000 per mile to build above-ground fiber lines on poles and $60,000 to $70,000 per mile to build underground.</p><figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" width="780" height="520" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-012_3840x2560web.webp?resize=780%2C520&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-226912" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-012_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-012_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-012_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-012_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-012_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-012_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-012_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-012_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=1568%2C1045&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-012_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=2000%2C1333&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-012_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-012_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-012_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-012_3840x2560web-1296x864.webp?w=370&amp;ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">A mural depicting Boligee, Alabama’s agricultural history appears on the side of the small town’s community center, which is a converted school building that houses city offices, a senior center, and event space. (Photo by Sarah Jane Tribble / KFF Health News)</figcaption></figure><p>Former President Joe Biden’s 2021 infrastructure law earmarked $65 billion with a goal of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ntia.gov/funding-programs/internet-all/broadband-equity-access-and-deployment-bead-program/program-documentation/biden-harris-administration-s-internet-all-initiative-bringing-affordable-reliable-high-speed">connecting all Americans to high-speed internet.</a>&nbsp;Money was designated to establish digital equity programs and to help low-income customers pay their internet bills. The law also set aside tens of billions through the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program, known as BEAD, to connect homes and businesses.</p><p>That effort prioritizes fiber-optic connections, but federal regulators recently outlined&nbsp;<a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25540449-ntia-bead-alternative-broadband-technology-policy-notice/">guidance for alternative technologies</a>, including low Earth orbit satellites like SpaceX’s Starlink service.</p><p>Funding the use of satellites in federal broadband programs has been controversial inside federal agencies. It has also been a sore point for Elon Musk, who is chief executive of SpaceX, which runs Starlink, and is a lead adviser to President Donald Trump.</p><p>After preliminary approval, a federal commission ruled that Starlink’s satellite system was “<a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25346053-fcc-23-105a1/#document/p6/a2614279">not reasonably capable</a>” of offering reliable high speeds. Musk tweeted last year that the commission had “<a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1841533475414749383">illegally revoked</a>” money awarded under the agency’s Trump-era Rural Digital Opportunity Fund.</p><p>In February, Trump nominated Arielle Roth to lead the federal agency overseeing the infrastructure act’s BEAD program. Roth is telecommunications policy director for the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Last year,&nbsp;<a href="https://fedsoc.org/events/the-broadband-economy-42-billion-infusion-and-a-newly-minted-biden-fcc-what-lies-ahead">she criticized the program</a>’s emphasis on fiber and said it was beleaguered by a “woke social agenda” with too many regulations.</p><p>Commerce Secretary Lutnick&nbsp;<a href="https://www.commerce.gov/news/press-releases/2025/03/statement-us-secretary-commerce-howard-lutnick-bead-program">last week said</a>&nbsp;he will get rid of “burdensome regulations” and revamp the program to “take a tech-neutral approach.” Republicans echoed his positions during a U.S. House subcommittee hearing the same day.</p><p>When asked about potentially weakening the program’s required low-cost internet option, former National Telecommunications and Information Administration official Sarah Morris said such a change would build internet connections that people can’t afford. Essentially, she said, they would be “building bridges to nowhere, building networks to no one.”</p><figure class="wp-block-image alignwide size-large"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" width="780" height="520" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-02_3840x2560web.webp?resize=780%2C520&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-226916" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-02_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-02_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-02_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-02_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-02_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-02_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-02_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-02_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=1568%2C1045&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-02_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=2000%2C1333&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-02_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-02_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-02_3840x2560web-scaled.webp?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Digital-despair-telehealth-02_3840x2560web-1296x864.webp?w=370&amp;ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Barbara Williams pricks her finger using a home blood glucose monitoring kit. Williams monitors her blood sugar levels and says she can feel when her sugar is high or low. (Photo by Andi Rice / KFF Health News)</figcaption></figure><h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>'That Hurt’</strong></h3><p>Over a lunch of tortilla chips with the savory sauce that had been simmering on the stove, Williams said she hadn’t been getting regular checkups before her diabetes diagnosis.</p><p>“To tell you the truth, if I can get up and move and nothing is bothering me, I don’t go to the doctor,” Williams said. “I’m just being honest.”</p><p>Years ago, Williams recalled, “my head was hurting me so bad I had to just lay down. I couldn’t stand up, walk, or nothing. I’d get so dizzy.”</p><p>Williams thought it was her blood pressure, but the doctor checked for diabetes. “How did they know? I don’t know,” Williams said.</p><p>As lunch ended, she pulled out her glucose monitor. Williams connected the needle and wiped her finger with an alcohol pad. Then she pricked her finger.</p><p>“Oh,” Williams said, sucking air through her teeth. “That hurt.”</p><p>She placed the sample in the machine, and it quickly displayed a reading of 145 — a number, Williams said, that meant she needed to stop eating.</p><hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-dots"/><p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/millions-in-us-live-in-places-where-doctors-dont-practice-and-telehealth-doesnt-reach/2025/03/17/">Millions in US Live in Places Where Doctors Don’t Practice and Telehealth Doesn’t Reach</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
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  411. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">226902</post-id> </item>
  412. <item>
  413. <title>45 Degrees North: Prescribed Fire</title>
  414. <link>https://dailyyonder.com/45-degrees-north-prescribed-fire/2025/03/14/</link>
  415. <comments>https://dailyyonder.com/45-degrees-north-prescribed-fire/2025/03/14/#respond</comments>
  417. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Donna Kallner]]></dc:creator>
  418. <pubDate>Fri, 14 Mar 2025 10:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
  419. <category><![CDATA[Environment]]></category>
  420. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://dailyyonder.com/?p=226630</guid>
  421.  
  422. <description><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="576" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240313_141520.jpg?fit=1024%2C576&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240313_141520.jpg?w=1920&amp;ssl=1 1920w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240313_141520.jpg?resize=760%2C428&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240313_141520.jpg?resize=1296%2C729&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240313_141520.jpg?resize=768%2C432&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240313_141520.jpg?resize=1536%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240313_141520.jpg?resize=1200%2C675&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240313_141520.jpg?resize=1024%2C576&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240313_141520.jpg?resize=1568%2C882&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240313_141520.jpg?resize=400%2C225&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240313_141520.jpg?resize=706%2C397&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240313_141520.jpg?fit=1024%2C576&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure>
  423. <p>In January, my husband and I flew to Las Vegas en route to our godson&#8217;s wedding near Parker, Arizona. We had daylight for most of the time we were driving through the desert country in Nevada and California, and saw enough of Arizona to appreciate the changing terrain as we traveled south along the east [&#8230;]</p>
  424. <p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/45-degrees-north-prescribed-fire/2025/03/14/">45 Degrees North: Prescribed Fire</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  425. ]]></description>
  426. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="576" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240313_141520.jpg?fit=1024%2C576&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240313_141520.jpg?w=1920&amp;ssl=1 1920w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240313_141520.jpg?resize=760%2C428&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240313_141520.jpg?resize=1296%2C729&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240313_141520.jpg?resize=768%2C432&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240313_141520.jpg?resize=1536%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240313_141520.jpg?resize=1200%2C675&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240313_141520.jpg?resize=1024%2C576&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240313_141520.jpg?resize=1568%2C882&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240313_141520.jpg?resize=400%2C225&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240313_141520.jpg?resize=706%2C397&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240313_141520.jpg?fit=1024%2C576&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure><p>In January, my husband and I flew to Las Vegas en route to our godson&#8217;s wedding near Parker, Arizona. We had daylight for most of the time we were driving through the desert country in Nevada and California, and saw enough of Arizona to appreciate the changing terrain as we traveled south along the east side of the Colorado River. But it was fully dark as we approached our destination on Lake Havasu, just south of the Bill Williams River.</p><p>The distinctive smell of burned cattails was the last thing we expected to encounter in a landscape so different from our home in rural northern Wisconsin. But it was strong well before we saw the lighted mobile sign that cautioned motorists to be alert for reduced visibility on the roadway during prescribed burn operations. The air had cleared by the time we arrived. But we could well imagine ourselves trying to navigate through the thick smoke of a wildland fire fueled by cattails.&nbsp;</p><p>Cattails are considered <a href="https://youtu.be/XKsYJhEpqNc?si=gN_D8AL1zOLR4fYx">flashy fuels</a>. Like dry grasses and other dry, fine fuels, they can burn very hot and very fast and may produce thick, black smoke that makes you think of burning tires. Visitors traveling through my neck of the woods at 45 degrees north should appreciate the beauty, importance as a habitat, and reputation cattails have as the <a href="https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Cattails">“supermarket of the swamp.”</a></p><p>But you wouldn&#8217;t see much of anything driving through the smoke of a cattail-fueled wildland fire. Imagine being a rural fire department volunteer working where motorists traveling at highway speeds encounter that kind of smoke.</p><p>That’s one reason why, in Wisconsin, the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) conducts <a href="https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/newsroom/release/1035">prescribed burns of cattail marshes</a>.</p><p>“These burns mimic the benefits historic fire once provided but occur under a safer ‘prescription’ range of weather and fuel conditions (compared to most wildfires). Throughout history, many ecosystems in Wisconsin experienced either periodic natural fire and/or were managed with cultural fire by First Nation people….,” <a href="https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/newsroom/release/103556">states</a> Wisconsin’s DNR. “The dead vegetation is reduced to ash, transferring this natural fertilizer back into the soil. Following the burn, hazardous fuels are reduced, foraging and nesting improve in the revitalized vegetation, and the stimulated growth of their root systems enhances their ability to store more carbon. Other benefits of prescribed burns include reducing non-native or invasive plant species and increasing regeneration of important native trees like oak and pine.”</p><p>The planning and preparation that go into prescribed burns won&#8217;t be the first thing you think about when you’re creeping along in smoke hoping the driver behind you is paying attention. But here are some things you should know about prescribed fire.</p><figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" width="780" height="439" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240515_145010.jpg?resize=780%2C439&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-226634" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240515_145010.jpg?resize=1296%2C729&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240515_145010.jpg?resize=760%2C428&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240515_145010.jpg?resize=768%2C432&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240515_145010.jpg?resize=1536%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240515_145010.jpg?resize=1200%2C675&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240515_145010.jpg?resize=1024%2C576&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240515_145010.jpg?resize=1568%2C882&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240515_145010.jpg?resize=400%2C225&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240515_145010.jpg?resize=706%2C397&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240515_145010.jpg?w=1920&amp;ssl=1 1920w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240515_145010-1296x729.jpg?w=370&amp;ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Prescribed burns help rural fire department volunteers learn ways to keep small fires from becoming a big ones before additional fire suppression resources can arrive. (Photo by Donna Kallner)</figcaption></figure><p><strong>Prescribed vs. Wild Fire.</strong> <a href="https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/forestfire/prescribedfire#:~:text=DNR%20prescribed%20burning&amp;text=Prescribed%20burning%20typically%20occurs%20during,animal%20species%20are%20less%20active.">Prescribed fire</a> is intentional. It’s applied to a specific area under specific conditions to accomplish specific objectives. A great deal of planning and preparation go into prescribed fires, which can be canceled or rescheduled if achieving those goals is unlikely given current conditions and resource availability. A prescribed fire event only starts when all the pieces for maintaining control are in place. Wildfires, on the other hand, are unplanned. They start when they start.&nbsp;</p><p>The initial response to a wildland fire might come from a volunteer fire department with limited personnel available to assess the situation, work to contain the fire, address potential threats to structures, and control traffic to prevent additional impacts – all while relaying situation reports and requests for equipment and personal to other agencies and mutual aid partners that will get there as soon as they can. Wildfires often occur when weather and other conditions favor growing a small fire into a large fire that&#8217;s difficult to control before additional resources can arrive</p><p><strong>Controlled Burn vs. Prescribed Fire. </strong>A <a href="https://wfca.com/wildfire-articles/the-pros-and-cons-of-prescribed-burns/">controlled burn</a> is a fire that someone starts with the intention to control it. That may be anything from a campfire to burning off plant debris from a garden to burning fields, pasture, or prairie on private lands. A farmer who tills a firebreak around a pasture and gets a permit to burn on a day when conditions are suitable would be conducting a controlled burn. A forester whose management plan calls for burning an area to reduce the fuel load, create a fire break, or produce conditions conducive to the release and germination of fire-dependent tree seeds would be planning a prescribed fire. A prescribed fire calls for specific documentation and adherence to specific weather conditions, labor and equipment availability, ignition procedures, contingency plans, and more – including stated goals to be met via prescribed fire and clearly stated go/no-go conditions.&nbsp;</p><figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
  427. <iframe title="Flashy Fuels" width="780" height="439" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XKsYJhEpqNc?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
  428. </div></figure><p><strong>The Fire Plan.</strong> The <a href="https://prescribedfire.org/">Wisconsin Prescribed Fire Council</a> outlines burn plan elements <a href="https://www.prescribedfire.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/WIPFC-BurnPlanElements.pdf">here</a> and provides a template <a href="https://www.prescribedfire.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/WIPFC-BurnPlanForm.pdf">here</a>. It may seem like it&#8217;s all just common sense until you have personnel unfamiliar with the intended burn area trying to find the right tote road through a potato farm. A written plan would include maps, emergency contacts, communications channels, a smoke management plan, contingency plans, a safety plan that identifies concerns about topography and specific hazards, and burn effectiveness criteria that influence the go/no-go decision based on conditions at the date and time of ignition. Having a written plan at the briefing helps keep everyone on the same page from start to finish.&nbsp;</p><p><strong>Training. </strong>Last year members of my volunteer fire department assisted with a prescribed burn conducted by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. It was a bit of extra manpower for them, but more importantly, it was a valuable training opportunity for us. This fire department covers 155 square miles that include federal, state, county, and private forests and agricultural lands. Plus private property where people ignite leaves and debris with the intent of a controlled burn but without really understanding fire behavior in changing weather, fire suppression techniques where water is limited, and how long everything takes when their intentions get out of hand.</p><p><strong>Support.</strong> On that prescribed burn, my role was training to provide support to the most likely initial response to an unplanned wildland fire call here — a small crew of volunteer firefighters — and to better understand what might come next. In an expanding incident, the number of personnel and the scope of needs can multiply exponentially. Until we are relieved by another incident command team’s planning and logistics sections, it’s up to people like us to figure out how to make do with what’s available.&nbsp;</p><p>I do enough as an unpaid volunteer to have strong feelings about “cutting waste” in the federal budget by cutting personnel, contracts, and funding for “non-essential” elements of wildland firefighting. If you want wildland firefighter crews to be able to do their jobs, they need support from other people who can help keep them fed, manage their camps including sanitation needs, ensure that fuel is available for vehicles and equipment where and when it’s needed, and much more.&nbsp;</p><figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" width="780" height="439" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240515_131951.jpg?resize=780%2C439&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-226635" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240515_131951.jpg?resize=1296%2C729&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240515_131951.jpg?resize=760%2C428&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240515_131951.jpg?resize=768%2C432&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240515_131951.jpg?resize=1536%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240515_131951.jpg?resize=1200%2C675&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240515_131951.jpg?resize=1024%2C576&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240515_131951.jpg?resize=1568%2C882&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240515_131951.jpg?resize=400%2C225&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240515_131951.jpg?resize=706%2C397&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240515_131951.jpg?w=1920&amp;ssl=1 1920w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_20240515_131951-1296x729.jpg?w=370&amp;ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Unlike actual wildland fires, prescribed burns don&#8217;t start until all the pieces for maintaining control are in place. (Photo by Donna Kallner)</figcaption></figure><p><strong>Volunteers.</strong> Last year our department had a request for firefighters to go downstate to protect structures outside a federal military installation, where <a href="https://www.wpr.org/history/conflicts-disasters/investigators-fort-mccoy-prescribed-burn-did-not-cause-april-wildfire">a 3,000-acre wildland fire</a> was burning. They were part of a small army of volunteers who responded. Unpaid volunteers are a heck of a good deal. (So are paid professional wildland fire crew members who could probably make more slinging fast food.) In the five states with the highest percentage of registered fire departments served all or mostly by volunteers (Delaware, South Dakota, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and North Dakota), volunteer departments add up to more than 96%. Know where it’s zero percent? The District of Columbia.&nbsp;</p><p>So I’m thinking it’s time for the millionaire members of Congress to form a volunteer fire department. Bear with me, please, because this notion isn&#8217;t any crazier than some of the solutions we&#8217;re seeing proposed or applied to meeting increasing needs with reduced resources.</p><p><strong>A new kind of hotshots. </strong>The legislative branch of the federal government holds the power of the purse. I think it would be helpful for more of them to have the kind of firsthand experience you get on an all-hazards volunteer fire department. Undoubtedly, the more you understand a topic the easier it should be to identify waste that can be trimmed. Serving in this capacity shouldn&#8217;t interfere too much with their caucuses and cocktail parties (other volunteers seem to manage). And it&#8217;s not like they&#8217;re busy holding pancake breakfasts to raise funds to pay for Congratulational salaries and benefits: Taxpayers cover those.&nbsp;</p><p>But LVFs (Legislative Volunteer Firefighters) probably wouldn&#8217;t get much experience on wildland fire in D.C. So that makes training at things like prescribed burns even more important. Because surely they would step up to fight fires in the Wildland Urban Interface in their home districts and volunteer to <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/oregon/articles/2025-02-13/trump-wants-states-to-clean-up-forests-to-stop-wildfires-but-his-administration-cut-off-funds">sweep and clean forest floors</a> to help reduce the fuels that feed wildfires. Voters aware that their own communities are at risk of becoming the next <a href="https://calmatters.org/environment/wildfires/2025/01/la-county-fires-wildland-urban-interface/">Eaton or Palisades</a> could share their concerns with elected officials not at town hall listening sessions but over rakes and shovels. Maybe our LVFs will bring along members of the executive and judicial branches and get sweaty alongside their big donors and others who normalize oversimplified “solutions” to complex problems.&nbsp;</p><p>Personally, I think the better choice for fuel reduction would be protecting programs and personnel with the experience and expertise to plan and implement effective prescribed burns.&nbsp;</p><p>What do you think?</p><hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-dots"/><p><em>Donna Kallner writes from Langlade County in rural northern Wisconsin.</em></p><p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/45-degrees-north-prescribed-fire/2025/03/14/">45 Degrees North: Prescribed Fire</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  429. ]]></content:encoded>
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  435. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">226630</post-id> </item>
  436. <item>
  437. <title>Q&#038;A: A Digital Bridge for Rural Healthcare Workers in Oregon</title>
  438. <link>https://dailyyonder.com/qa-a-digital-bridge-for-rural-healthcare-workers-in-oregon/2025/03/14/</link>
  439. <comments>https://dailyyonder.com/qa-a-digital-bridge-for-rural-healthcare-workers-in-oregon/2025/03/14/#respond</comments>
  441. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Jan Pytalski]]></dc:creator>
  442. <pubDate>Fri, 14 Mar 2025 09:59:00 +0000</pubDate>
  443. <category><![CDATA[Health]]></category>
  444. <category><![CDATA[Path Finders]]></category>
  445. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://dailyyonder.com/?p=226915</guid>
  446.  
  447. <description><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="683" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?w=6720&amp;ssl=1 6720w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?resize=1568%2C1045&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?resize=2000%2C1333&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure>
  448. <p>Editor’s Note: This interview first appeared in Path Finders, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each week, Path Finders features a Q&#38;A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Like what you see here? You can join the mailing list at the bottom of this article and receive more conversations like this in your inbox each week. [&#8230;]</p>
  449. <p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/qa-a-digital-bridge-for-rural-healthcare-workers-in-oregon/2025/03/14/">Q&amp;A: A Digital Bridge for Rural Healthcare Workers in Oregon</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  450. ]]></description>
  451. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="683" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?w=6720&amp;ssl=1 6720w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?resize=1568%2C1045&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?resize=2000%2C1333&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure><p><em>Editor’s Note: This interview first appeared in <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/path-finders/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Path Finders</a>, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each week, Path Finders features a Q&amp;A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Like what you see here? You can <a href="#m_-4001436043793675313_signup">join the mailing list at the bottom of this article</a> and receive more conversations like this in your inbox each week.</em></p><hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/><p>Amelia Roth is a developmental and behavioral pediatrician practicing in Douglas County, Oregon. She knew she wanted to be a physician from an early age, and following her dad and mom – both medical providers – she ended up going to medical school herself.</p><p>“The summer before I attended medical school, I was asked to help care for a sweet toddler boy with down syndrome, whom I instantly adored,” she said.</p><p>“I recall my mother sending me a newspaper clipping at that time about a newer type of pediatrician, a developmental pediatrician, who actually specialized in children with developmental differences. I became very intrigued with this idea, and later relished in shadowing developmental pediatricians during medical school in South Carolina and throughout my pediatric residency in Oregon.”  </p><p>Amelia is also a member of the <a href="https://www.oregonechonetwork.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Oregon ECHO Network</a>, a model “inspired by the way clinicians learn from medical rounds during residencies…,” a network for professional development for healthcare workers who meet in online classrooms to hear about real-life cases from experts in their respective fields and gain knowledge and expertise that otherwise would be hard to access. </p><p>Today, <a href="https://projectecho.unm.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Project ECHO</a> serves hundreds of communities domestically and abroad, and in Oregon alone, around 20% of participating zip codes are rural. </p><p>“Originally, I was invited as a virtual guest speaker to an ECHO involving a team in Ukraine in 2022, and I was very impressed with the program,” Amelia recalled.  “I really enjoyed the collaborative forum, and I was later contacted by one of my mentors in the spring of 2023 about becoming faculty for a state-wide psychiatry ECHO through OHSU [Oregon Health &amp; Science University].”</p><p>Now, Amelia is both a contributor to the pool of experts and a beneficiary of knowledge shared by other specialists through the ECHO model of learning. In our conversation, we touched on how ECHO can help rural communities meet their healthcare needs, what she found irresistible about the model, inspirations to practice medicine for underserved populations, and much more.</p><hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/><p class="has-text-align-center"><em>This interview has been edited for length and clarity. </em></p><figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" width="780" height="520" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?resize=780%2C520&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-226825" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?resize=1296%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?resize=760%2C507&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?resize=1568%2C1045&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?resize=2000%2C1333&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?resize=400%2C267&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?resize=706%2C471&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55.png?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Amelia-Roth_55-1296x864.png?w=370&amp;ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Dr. Amelia Roth practices in rural Douglas County, Oregon. (Photo courtesy of Amelia Roth)</figcaption></figure><p><strong>Jan Pytalski, The Daily Yonder:</strong> <strong>How did you first hear of ECHO?</strong></p><p><strong>Dr. Amelia Roth: </strong>I first heard of ECHO as one of my closest friends and colleague leads an autism ECHO as faculty, and I was able to see how much she enjoyed and benefited from this program.  Having worked hard as a primary care pediatrician, prior to my fellowship, always in areas without an academic center, I loved the idea of creating a space where those providers on the front lines of care can present their trickiest clinical conundrums in a supportive and knowledge-rich environment where both specialists and other primary care providers alike share advice.  </p><p>One can feel so alone sometimes when practicing medicine, particularly in rural areas, and I loved the collegial vibe and power of connection that ECHO seemed to create. Having left an academic institution to return to a more rural area, I loved the idea of keeping that academic life-line active, as a means of ensuring I would continue to provide the most up-to-date care to my patients. </p><p>I currently serve as a regular weekly faculty member for the Child Psychiatry ECHO – one of more than 40 different topical ECHOs run by the Oregon ECHO Network, which reaches thousands of rural providers across every county in the state. I have experienced a dynamic benefit from discussions around various clinical presentations and didactics with my co-faculty members and the participants in equal measure. </p><p><strong>DY:</strong> <strong>Describe the need for a project like ECHO. Why is it so fundamental for rural areas to have that kind of opportunity?</strong></p><p><strong>AR: </strong>The farther we medical providers get from academic institutions, which are typically housed in big cities, the more complex patients we tend to take on, compared to our colleagues practicing in more resource-rich larger cities. As we get more rural, we find ourselves caring for higher risk families in “resource deserts,” while being physically located farther from specialists. ECHO provides a safety-net for the hardworking medical providers bravely caring for some of the most challenging medical and socio-economic scenarios, without the benefit of a specialist down the hall or a high-level medical center across the street.  </p><p>ECHO provides direct access to specialist care, while simultaneously helping clinical care experts understand the challenges facing providers and patients living and working in more rural areas.  It creates a whole new community of practice with rural providers and specialists that ultimately ensures that rural and isolated families can get the care they need where they live.</p><p><strong>DY: How did you end up practicing in a rural area, in Douglas County? What’s striking about our healthcare needs here? How are rural needs different from urban needs?</strong></p><p><strong>AR:</strong> I had always wanted to work in a rural area, and actually met my husband while doing a residency rotation in a very small town in Eastern Oregon, where he was living and working as a PA-C [Physician Assistant-Certified] in pediatrics. He is from the small town in which we currently live, and we had always hoped to end up back here.   </p><p>What I find striking is that it seems that in these larger and more spread-out spaces, kids end up coming to medical attention much later for both medical and developmental conditions than they would in a more condensed city. Families seem to be more isolated, and this seems to lead to later diagnoses and thus poorer outcomes. Families have to travel farther to come in for clinic visits and therapies, and this leads to more missed visits, greater stress for families seeking care, and again, less optimal outcomes for children. In urban areas, the services for kids appear to be both more robust and more accessible, meaning families have an easier time finding clinics/therapeutic centers closer to their homes, which decreases barriers to accessing care and improves health outcomes.</p><p><strong>DY:</strong> <strong>What motivates you to practice here?</strong></p><p><strong>AR:</strong> Selfishly, I love the natural beauty, the plentiful farm animals, the slower pace of life, and the proximity to my husband’s parents. I love the river, the wildlife, and I love the kindness I see in so many who live here, regardless of their level of resources. I also see an incredible need. I see families working extremely hard to care for their children, break the bonds of addictions, and heal their own traumas.  </p><p>Children in Douglas County have more adverse childhood events than children in any other Oregon county, and that is readily apparent to me as I see them day to day in my clinic. I see so many families who desperately love their children and want the best for them, while simultaneously having trouble organizing their care and finding the resources they need to help them thrive. The work here feels mission-minded, reminiscent of some of the volunteer work I had done in developing countries in my younger years. I am never bored and always inspired to seek ways to do more for these deserving families. </p><p><strong>DY:</strong> <strong>Can you give some examples of real-life benefits of working with ECHO, both for you and for patients?  </strong></p><p><strong>AR: </strong>As a faculty member, I myself have presented some of my most challenging patient scenarios during our meetings, and it has been incredible to glean advice from various providers in a large geographic catchment area. Hearing the case presentations of colleagues in other rural areas creates a feeling of validation and encouragement – as we are all seeing the same levels of need, and all feeling the same desire to provide more healing and care in more creative ways. Moral burnout is a serious threat to clinicians at this time.   </p><p>This type of burnout results from a chronic feeling of knowing what it is that your patients need, while also not being able to provide this for them. ECHO is an incredible antidote to this moral burn-out, as it creates a bridge to connect our primary care providers to specialists, which enables them to quickly access higher levels of expert care, bypassing months and years-long waitlists in which patients too often find themselves.  </p><p>This, in turn, serves to decrease rural providers’ sense of isolation while increasing their job satisfaction, both of which can go a long way towards keeping skilled medical providers in rural areas, where there is great need. I have no doubt that rural communities across the country would all benefit from a collaborative program like ECHO, which works to ensure that rural providers get the collegial support they need to continue providing excellent care to the deserving families in their communities.</p><hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/><div id="signup" class="wp-block-group is-style-default has-light-gray-background-color has-background"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow"><div style="height:1px" aria-hidden="true" class="wp-block-spacer"></div>
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  453. <div class="wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-5 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex"><div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow" style="flex-basis:33.33%"><figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://dailyyonder.com/contact-us/subscribe-daily-yonder/#path-finders"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" width="780" height="780" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited-1296x1296.png?resize=780%2C780&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-70866" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?resize=1296%2C1296&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?resize=760%2C760&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?resize=768%2C768&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?resize=1536%2C1536&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?resize=1200%2C1200&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?resize=800%2C800&amp;ssl=1 800w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?resize=400%2C400&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?resize=200%2C200&amp;ssl=1 200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?resize=1568%2C1568&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?resize=300%2C300&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?resize=706%2C706&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?resize=100%2C100&amp;ssl=1 100w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited.png?w=1697&amp;ssl=1 1697w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/path-finders-icon-edited-1296x1296.png?w=370&amp;ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" /></a></figure></div>
  454.  
  455. <div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow" style="flex-basis:66.66%"><p>This interview first appeared in <strong>Path Finders</strong>, a weekly email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each Monday, Path Finders features a Q&amp;A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Join the mailing list today, to have these illuminating conversations delivered straight to your inbox. </p></div></div>
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  484. </div></div></div><hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/><p></p><p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/qa-a-digital-bridge-for-rural-healthcare-workers-in-oregon/2025/03/14/">Q&amp;A: A Digital Bridge for Rural Healthcare Workers in Oregon</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
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  491. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">226915</post-id> </item>
  492. <item>
  493. <title>With Crumbling Public Health Infrastructure, Rural Texas Scrambles to Respond to Measles</title>
  494. <link>https://dailyyonder.com/with-crumbling-public-health-infrastructure-rural-texas-scrambles-to-respond-to-measles/2025/03/13/</link>
  495. <comments>https://dailyyonder.com/with-crumbling-public-health-infrastructure-rural-texas-scrambles-to-respond-to-measles/2025/03/13/#respond</comments>
  497. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Pooja Salhotra / The Texas Tribune]]></dc:creator>
  498. <pubDate>Thu, 13 Mar 2025 18:22:31 +0000</pubDate>
  499. <category><![CDATA[Health]]></category>
  500. <category><![CDATA[repub]]></category>
  501. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://dailyyonder.com/?p=226947</guid>
  502.  
  503. <description><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="686" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-17.webp?fit=1024%2C686&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-17.webp?w=2500&amp;ssl=1 2500w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-17.webp?resize=760%2C509&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-17.webp?resize=1296%2C868&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-17.webp?resize=768%2C515&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-17.webp?resize=1536%2C1029&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-17.webp?resize=2048%2C1372&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-17.webp?resize=1200%2C804&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-17.webp?resize=1024%2C686&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-17.webp?resize=1568%2C1051&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-17.webp?resize=2000%2C1340&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-17.webp?resize=400%2C268&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-17.webp?resize=706%2C473&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-17.webp?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-17.webp?fit=1024%2C686&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure>
  504. <p>This story was originally published by the Texas Tribune on March 10, 2025. Five years ago, Melanie Richburg used a roll of duct tape, a HEPA filter and a portable fan to draw contaminated air out of a hospital room where patients were tested for the coronavirus. Now, as the state’s largest measles outbreak in [&#8230;]</p>
  505. <p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/with-crumbling-public-health-infrastructure-rural-texas-scrambles-to-respond-to-measles/2025/03/13/">With Crumbling Public Health Infrastructure, Rural Texas Scrambles to Respond to Measles</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
  506. ]]></description>
  507. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure><img width="1024" height="686" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-17.webp?fit=1024%2C686&amp;ssl=1" class="attachment-rss-image-size size-rss-image-size wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-17.webp?w=2500&amp;ssl=1 2500w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-17.webp?resize=760%2C509&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-17.webp?resize=1296%2C868&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-17.webp?resize=768%2C515&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-17.webp?resize=1536%2C1029&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-17.webp?resize=2048%2C1372&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-17.webp?resize=1200%2C804&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-17.webp?resize=1024%2C686&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-17.webp?resize=1568%2C1051&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-17.webp?resize=2000%2C1340&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-17.webp?resize=400%2C268&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-17.webp?resize=706%2C473&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-17.webp?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-17.webp?fit=1024%2C686&amp;ssl=1&amp;w=370 370w" sizes="(max-width: 34.9rem) calc(100vw - 2rem), (max-width: 53rem) calc(8 * (100vw / 12)), (min-width: 53rem) calc(6 * (100vw / 12)), 100vw" /></figure><p class="has-text-align-center"><em>This story was originally published by the <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2025/03/10/rural-texas-measles-outbreak-response/">Texas Tribune</a> on March 10, 2025.</em></p><p>Five years ago, Melanie Richburg used a roll of duct tape, a HEPA filter and a portable fan to draw contaminated air out of a hospital room where patients were tested for the coronavirus.</p><p>Now, as the state’s largest measles outbreak in three decades <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2025/02/18/texas-measles-outbreak-climbs/">sickens an increasing number</a> of Texans in the South Plains region, the Lynn County Hospital District, where Richburg serves as the chief executive officer, is still without specialized isolation rooms to treat patients.</p><p>So, she’s prepared to bring out the duct tape again.</p><p>“If we see the volume of patients exceeds the number of beds available at children&#8217;s hospitals, we’re going to need a contingency plan,” said Richburg, whose county is 30 miles south of Lubbock and has had two measles cases. “The biggest struggle we have is the same struggle we had during COVID.”</p><p>The coronavirus pandemic underscored the need for robust public health infrastructure. And it brought to light a remarkable urban-rural divide in access to basic health services. In the months after the virus ravaged the country, federal dollars flowed to local public health districts, and policies targeting health care deserts saw a renewed push.</p><p>Yet as a disease that had been declared eliminated from the U.S. in 2000 makes a resurgence, rural West Texas communities and state officials are scrambling to respond. Aging infrastructure, a dearth of primary care providers and long distances between testing sites and laboratories plague much of rural Texas, where the measles outbreak has concentrated.</p><p><a href="https://www.dshs.texas.gov/news-alerts/measles-outbreak-2025">At least 198</a> people in Texas have been infected with measles since late January, and <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2025/02/26/texas-measles-death/">one child has died</a> from measles, the first such death in the country in a decade.</p><p>More measles cases are expected, and the outbreak could last for months, state health services commissioner Jennifer Shuford told lawmakers last week.</p><p>Though different from COVID in many ways, measles is similarly revealing how a lack of public health resources leaves rural communities vulnerable. What’s left are local leaders forced to scrape together the few tools they have to respond to an emergency, contending with years of lackluster investment from the state and federal level to proactively prevent emerging public health threats.</p><p>“We’re in a public health shortage area,” said Gordon Mattimoe, director of the Andrews County Health Department.“ You have to think outside the box.”</p><h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="c62d8813-07d8-4e87-9cf4-3c68969cbbaa">Lack of Infrastructure</h3><p>Some 64 Texas counties don’t have a hospital, and 25 lack primary care physicians, according to the <a href="https://texasagriculture.gov/Portals/0/forms/ER/RuralHealth/SORH%20Infographic.pdf">Texas Department of Agriculture</a>. Twenty-six rural Texas hospitals closed between 2010 and 2020, according to <a href="https://www.torchnet.org/advocacy--rural-hospital-closure.html">a rural hospital trade organization</a>, and although closures slowed in the years since, those still standing are often in crumbling buildings with few medical providers.</p><p>Swaths of Texas have scant resources for public awareness campaigns. And they lack sufficient medical staff with expertise to provide the one-on-one education needed to encourage vaccination and regular visits to the doctor.</p><p>“We have a difficult time in our area finding pediatricians for our newborns,” said Sara Safarzadeh Amiri, chief medical officer for Odessa Regional Medical Center and Scenic Mountain Medical Center. “That’s a problem. If you can’t find a pediatrician, then when a serious question comes up, who do you ask?”</p><p>Most of Texas’ measles cases are in unvaccinated school-aged children and are concentrated in the Mennonite community in Gaines County. Cases have also been confirmed in eight other counties spanning Dallam near the Oklahoma border down to Ector, south of Gaines.</p><figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" width="780" height="522" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-04.webp?resize=780%2C522&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-226952" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-04.webp?resize=1296%2C868&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-04.webp?resize=760%2C509&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-04.webp?resize=768%2C515&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-04.webp?resize=1536%2C1029&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-04.webp?resize=2048%2C1372&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-04.webp?resize=1200%2C804&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-04.webp?resize=1024%2C686&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-04.webp?resize=1568%2C1051&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-04.webp?resize=2000%2C1340&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-04.webp?resize=400%2C268&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-04.webp?resize=706%2C473&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-04.webp?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-04-1296x868.webp?w=370&amp;ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Sara Safarzadeh Amiri, chief medical officer for Odessa Regional Medical Center and Scenic Mountain Medical Center, discusses the measles outbreak on March 6, 2025. (Photo by Mark Rogers / The Texas Tribune)</figcaption></figure><p>To contain the illness, rural health care teams have cordoned off spaces to conduct measles testing, used social media to blast residents with information about vaccination efficacy and schlepped throat swabs across counties to ship them to a state lab in Austin — the only public state facility that was conducting measles testing until the Texas Tech University Bioterrorism Response Laboratory, part of a national network of CDC-funded labs, began measles testing last Monday.</p><p>Testing is critical for measles, experts say, because infected individuals can be contagious for several days and must isolate themselves to avoid spreading it further.</p><p>In Gaines County, runners have had to drive specimens up to 70 miles to get to a FedEx office where they could ship the specimen to the state laboratory. It could then take another 48 hours to get test results. During that time, public health officials would ask patients suspected of measles to quarantine — but they don’t know if they followed through.</p><p>“Some people need the test to say ‘I’m positive’ before they actually do something or follow the directions given,” Amiri said. “Having that testing available is very important.”</p><p>In Andrews County, just south of Gaines, Mattimoe is using the old City Hall building as a testing site because he doesn’t have a reverse pressure room.</p><p>Those rooms prevent contagious diseases from spreading to other people, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/measles/hcp/communication-resources/clinical-diagnosis-fact-sheet.html#:~:text=of%20serious%20complications.-,What%20to%20do%20if%20you%20have%20a%20suspected%20case,must%20use%20N%2D95%20masks.">recommends</a> suspected measles patients are treated there when possible. In the absence of such spaces, rural counties including Lynn and Yoakum have improvised a room for measles testing, hoping they don’t get overrun with more patients they can handle.</p><p>Mattimoe, who said he is anticipating more cases, opted to open up City Hall for testing since that building happens to be vacant.</p><p>WIthout it, Mattimoe said, he’d have to “shut down the entire department for two hours between suspected cases.”</p><figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" width="780" height="522" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-13.webp?resize=780%2C522&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-226953" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-13.webp?resize=1296%2C868&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-13.webp?resize=760%2C509&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-13.webp?resize=768%2C515&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-13.webp?resize=1536%2C1029&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-13.webp?resize=2048%2C1372&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-13.webp?resize=1200%2C804&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-13.webp?resize=1024%2C686&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-13.webp?resize=1568%2C1051&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-13.webp?resize=2000%2C1340&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-13.webp?resize=400%2C268&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-13.webp?resize=706%2C473&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-13.webp?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-13-1296x868.webp?w=370&amp;ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Andrews County Health Department director Gordon Mattimoe looks over the supply of refrigerated measles vaccines at the old City Hall building in Andrews. (Photo by Mark Rogers / The Texas Tribune)</figcaption></figure><h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="2b3fad39-09a3-4ce3-bea2-9ca3a70f5f7e">Reactive Instead of Proactive Responses</h3><p>Public health is based upon prevention, yet it’s emergencies that spur the most action, particularly in rural communities.</p><p>It was only after a school-aged child died from measles that state and federal support intensified. Twenty seven contractors were brought into the outbreak area last week to assist local health departments, Shuford, the state health services commissioner, said during a legislative hearing. A public awareness campaign with billboards and social media messaging was also launched. And, upon a request from the state, the federal CDC sent <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/04/us/politics/cdc-measles-outbreak.html">“disease detectives”</a> to West Texas.</p><p>County officials also doubled down their efforts. In Ector County, County Judge Dustin Fawcett made media appearances to discuss the efficacy of the MMRV vaccine whose two doses provide 97% protection against measles. And the commissioners court approved the purchase of a $7,695 freezer to store measles test specimens — samples shipped after the date of collection must be kept at -70 degrees celsius.</p><figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" width="780" height="522" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-08.webp?resize=780%2C522&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-226954" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-08.webp?resize=1296%2C868&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-08.webp?resize=760%2C509&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-08.webp?resize=768%2C515&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-08.webp?resize=1536%2C1029&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-08.webp?resize=2048%2C1372&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-08.webp?resize=1200%2C804&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-08.webp?resize=1024%2C686&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-08.webp?resize=1568%2C1051&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-08.webp?resize=2000%2C1340&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-08.webp?resize=400%2C268&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-08.webp?resize=706%2C473&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-08.webp?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-08-1296x868.webp?w=370&amp;ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">The Odessa Regional Medical Center in Odessa. (Photo by Mark Rogers / The Texas Tribune)</figcaption></figure><p>In Andrews County, residents stepped up their communal responsibilities. Mattimoe saw a surge of people coming into the clinic to get vaccinated. “Unfortunately, the death of a child was one of the things that spurred many people to come in,” Mattimoe said.</p><p>Even as state and federal officials are sharing more information on vaccines, experts say those campaigns needed to come sooner. They have known for years that vaccination rates have been declining.</p><p>“We shouldn&#8217;t be doing it during an outbreak,” Amiri said. “We should be doing it beforehand to prevent the outbreak.”</p><p>Getting vaccines in residents is further complicated by the fact that Texas has a mostly decentralized system of public health. Cities and counties can stand up their own public health departments or districts, but the majority of rural counties can’t afford to have their own. Instead, they rely on <a href="https://www.dshs.texas.gov/regional-local-health-operations/public-health-regions">one of 11 public health regions</a>.</p><p>Those regions cover vast territories with limited dollars and don’t always know the ins and outs of local communities, especially on how to motivate residents to get vaccinated. The logistical challenges of traveling across counties adds another layer of difficulty.</p><p>“You have to call these tiny towns and figure out who can give you space for free to set up a testing clinic,” Wells said. “Then you’re driving from Lubbock to rural areas and that cuts how long you can keep the clinics open.”</p><p>And then, rural public health departments are having to contend with mixed messaging from the federal level as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health and human services secretary, has cast vaccination as a personal choice while downplaying the news of the outbreak.</p><p>“I think with the changes that are occurring at the federal level, we need to realize that we do need to strengthen our local public health,” Amiri said.</p><h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="612f07ed-739f-478e-9428-a683950187c7">The Power of Funding</h3><p>Years of underinvestment in public health left Texas <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/17/texas-coronavirus-health-funding/">ill prepared for the coronavirus pandemic</a> in 2020. Hospital equipment was scarce, and state and local health departments had outdated technology that limited access to crucial data.</p><p>The pandemic also exposed the rural-urban inequities in health care access. Residents of Texas counties without hospitals died from COVID-19 at 20% higher rates than residents of counties with hospitals, according to <a href="https://www.statesman.com/story/news/2020/12/31/covid-19-death-rates-higher-texas-counties-without-hospitals/4001910001/">an analysis by the Austin American Statesman.</a></p><p>An influx in federal funding helped shore up local public health departments and stave off more rural hospital closures. Texas received <a href="https://www.apha.org/-/media/files/pdf/advocacy/speak/sfh_texas.pdf">$35.5 million in grants</a> for improvements in public health infrastructure in fiscal year 2020. An additional $221 million — the most of any state — is flowing to Texas through the CDC’s five-year Public Health Infrastructure Grant.</p><p>That funding has helped some local health departments address the measles outbreak, public health officials said. The Lubbock public health department has nearly doubled in size thanks to a $2 million grant. Those extra workers have been on the front lines of testing for measles and vaccinating children.</p><p>“It moved us from undersized to right sized,” said Katherine Wells, director of the city’s public health department. “It got us to the…health department we need for Lubbock.”</p><p>In Andrews County, Mattimoe has also used grant dollars to grow his health department. Four new employees, including an epidemiologist and a social worker, have helped the county complete a population health assessment that offers a snapshot of residents’ needs. And its year-round vaccine clinics have helped stave off the worst of the measles outbreak.</p><p>“Community immunity has really saved us,” Mattimoe said. “There will be a case eventually, but there’s something to be said about herd immunity.” Andrews County does not have any confirmed measles cases as of Friday.</p><p>The influx of dollars that rural communities received during the height of the pandemic showed the meaningful changes that officials could do with more support, but it still hasn’t been enough.</p><p>Texas spends less on public health per person than the vast majority of other states, according to the <a href="https://statehealthcompare.shadac.org/rank/117/per-person-state-public-health-funding#2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52/a/76/154/false/location">State Health Access Data Assistance Center</a>, whose analysis shows Texas spent $17 per person on public health in 2023. A decade earlier, the spend was $19.</p><figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" width="780" height="522" src="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-19.webp?resize=780%2C522&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-226955" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-19.webp?resize=1296%2C868&amp;ssl=1 1296w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-19.webp?resize=760%2C509&amp;ssl=1 760w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-19.webp?resize=768%2C515&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-19.webp?resize=1536%2C1029&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-19.webp?resize=2048%2C1372&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-19.webp?resize=1200%2C804&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-19.webp?resize=1024%2C686&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-19.webp?resize=1568%2C1051&amp;ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-19.webp?resize=2000%2C1340&amp;ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-19.webp?resize=400%2C268&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-19.webp?resize=706%2C473&amp;ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-19.webp?w=2340&amp;ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/dailyyonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0306-Measles-Infrastructure-MR-TT-19-1296x868.webp?w=370&amp;ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">The Lynn County Hospital District building in Tahoka on March 6, 2025. Lynn County is Lubbock County&#8217;s southern neighbor. (Photo by Mark Rogers / The Texas Tribune)</figcaption></figure><p>The low levels of state funding particularly hurt rural communities that have higher rates of uninsured Texans and more senior citizens with greater health needs, according to the <a href="https://www.torchnet.org/uploads/1/1/9/5/119501126/ten_things_hospitals-map_w-photos_final.pdf">Texas Organization of Rural and Community Hospitals. </a>Deteriorating buildings and the shortage of medical professionals still persist in rural areas, while lower volumes of patients means higher health care operational costs.</p><p>In Lynn County, Richburg, the CEO of the health district, had hoped the makeshift contraption she made during COVID for a reverse pressure room wouldn’t be needed again in her rural community of 5,500 people. She attempted to pass a bond last year to pay for infrastructure upgrades, including a mini intensive care unit with four negative pressure rooms.</p><p>Voters <a href="https://www.kcbd.com/2024/05/05/voters-reject-lynn-county-hospital-bond/">rejected the proposed tax increase</a>, though, a gut punch to Richburg.</p><p>“We wanted those four specific beds so that when we had situations where we needed to isolate patients, they’d be adequately cared for and not in a room with a broken window with a fan duct taped in it,” she said.</p><p>In addition to isolation rooms, Lynn County’s health care system is due for a major electrical upgrade, Richburg said. The facility’s backup power generator doesn’t cover the MRI machine or the CAT scan. In the meantime, Richburg and her staff plan to do their best with what they have.</p><p>“We’re still here, the lights still come on every morning, and patients still come in for services,” Richburg said. “We’re not going away.”</p><hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-dots"/><p><em>Disclosure: Texas Tech University has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune&#8217;s journalism. Find a complete <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/support-us/corporate-sponsors/">list of them here</a>.</em></p><script async src="https://ping.texastribune.org/ping.js" data-source="repub" data-canonical="https://www.texastribune.org/2025/03/10/rural-texas-measles-outbreak-response/" crossorigin="anonymous"></script><p></p><p>The post <a href="https://dailyyonder.com/with-crumbling-public-health-infrastructure-rural-texas-scrambles-to-respond-to-measles/2025/03/13/">With Crumbling Public Health Infrastructure, Rural Texas Scrambles to Respond to Measles</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dailyyonder.com">The Daily Yonder</a>.</p>
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