LOGAN, W.Va. — Sitting on a bench laughing with a co-worker during a morning smoke break, Debra Orcutt quickly raises her hand when asked if she knows anyone dealing with depression. “I am,” she tells a visitor to the roadside…
Lori Bergman had a dream, but like a lot of small-scale entrepreneurs, couldn’t get a bank loan to realize it. For four years, the Missouri transplant had run a successful food truck at events in and around her new home…
At long last, naloxone is available over the counter. But now comes a moment of truth for the overdose-reversal medication: Will increased access help to save lives? And more immediately, can everyone who wants to buy naloxone at a pharmacy…
Rural Minnesota students living in ‘ice castles’ to make ends meet. California administrators considered dormitory barges, sending students out to sea. And housing isn’t the only challenge. In my reporting this year, from Georgia and Kansas to West Virginia and Wyoming,…
An important email appeared in the inboxes of a small group of health care workers north of Boston as this summer started. It warned that local temperatures were rising into the 80s. An 80-plus-degree day is not sizzling by Phoenix…
Rural America’s lower rate of broadband access is interfering with the adoption of cloud computing, a major factor in business innovation, according to a new study from Penn State and the National Science Foundation. “If you don’t have broadband, you…
America is again segregated. Spaces where opponents divided by supposed geographic and political differences interact are increasingly rare. Since the 2016 election, the media’s infatuation with rifts between rural and urban voters has been ensconced into our cultural design. These…
The Biden administration wants to crack down on private arrangements among some hospitals to reimburse themselves for taxes that help fund coverage for low-income people. It contends the practice violates federal law. Federal regulators say these arrangements “appear designed to”…
Devastating wildfires swept through Maui, Hawai’i, last week, flattening the small town of Lāhainā on the western side of the island. As of August 14, almost 100 people are confirmed dead, making it the fifth deadliest wildfire in U.S. history (and the…
When Rafferty Cleary became the cultural administrator for Monterey, Tennessee, he was eager to learn about what the community stood for, who the people were, and what assets were available to promote to visitors. Cleary had earlier seen the work…