Rural News
Tennessee Economic Development Officials Offer To Help Rescue Rural Hospitals
Nashville Public Radio | Posted on April 10, 2018Tennessee's economic development officials want to help rescue rural hospitals. They propose dispatching restructuring specialists to a dozen or more hospitals that are teetering on the edge. Tennessee has lost more hospitals since 2012 than any state but Texas, and the Department of Economic and Community Development argues that hospitals are doubly important for rural communities. They're often the largest employer around, and without one, it's virtually impossible to recruit major businesses to the area. "Rural hospital closures have impacted us in a very direct way and have affected our ability to recruit to certain rural areas," ECD's Sammie Arnold told lawmakers during a recent hearing.The proposal, dubbed the Tennessee Rural Hospital Transformation Act, would direct ECD to send contractors to rural hospitals at risk of closure to help develop a stabilization plan.
New Momentum for Addiction Treatment Behind Bars
Pew Charitable Trust | Posted on April 10, 2018From the moment they are arrested, people with an addiction to heroin and prescription painkillers and those who are taking medications to beat their addictions face the prospect of painful opioid withdrawal. At least a quarter of the people in U.S. prisons and jails are addicted to opioids. Those who are released rejoin their communities with dangerously reduced tolerance and nothing to blunt their drug cravings, making them highly susceptible to a deadly overdose.But new scientific evidence and a recently announced federal investigation may soften prison officials’ long-held opposition to medication-assisted treatment. Rhode Island is the only state that provides all three FDA-approved addiction medications, methadone, buprenorphine and a long-acting, injectable form of naltrexone known as Vivitrol, to all inmates. A recent study in the medical journal JAMA Psychiatry found that opioid overdose deaths dropped by nearly two-thirds among recently incarcerated people in the first year of a new program that screens and provides addiction medicines to all state inmates.
Neighborhood Effects: How Small Towns Give Poor Kids a Head Start
Daily Yonder | Posted on April 10, 2018New research shows that children from poor families in rural communities earn more by their mid-20s than their urban peers, contrary to stereotypes about the disadvantages of growing up rural. A major study of individual incomes found that poor children who grow up in three-quarters of rural counties earn more than the national average by their mid-20s. Find out about what researchers call “neighborhood effects” in rural communities and the lifelong advantages of growing up in places with less income disparity, good schools, and strong civic life. Hear about newly released research on how community matters to poor children.
Rural Broadband’s Only Hope: Thinking Outside the Box?
Government Technology | Posted on April 10, 2018As states struggle to close the connectivity gap in rural areas, some experts believe a federal mandate, similar to the one that first brought those residents electricity, might be in order.The American landscape of broadband in rural areas is spotty at best. It is a picture covered with splotches of color. Some maps are covered with red indicating there is no service; and other maps are covered in blue where access can be found. In states like North and South Dakota, officials have done their best to give their populace fiber to the home.Then there are areas where the state government has worked hard to provide grants and a flexible network of private and local not-for-profit organizations to build out coverage slowly. An excellent example of this would be Minnesota where 117 providers have come together to build infrastructure in the name of economic development. But there are still areas that have nothing to tether them to the modern world at all. These areas are not just rural, but geographically challenging to traverse and connect.To solidify his case and get state law behind him, he offered amendments to House Bill 4023, relating to rural connectivity and the use the state and university system's network to connect rural Oregon municipalities, where 43 school districts still lack a fiber-optic connection.“On one-third or half the landmass of the state, people can't access the Internet," Pettit said. "The state is full of data centers, from Apple to Google, but there are 10 counties with 49 school districts without connectivity."
Medicaid Work Debate Gets a Tennessee Twist
Roll Call | Posted on April 10, 2018A growing number of mostly Republican-led states are itching to create work requirements for people on Medicaid, but finding a way to pay for it could prove challenging. In Tennessee, lawmakers want to add a Medicaid work mandate, but only if they can use federal — not state — dollars to make it happen. And they think there may be a way to do just that.Republicans have proposed taking money from a different government program that provides cash assistance to poor families and instead using it to cover the multimillion-dollar cost of creating and monitoring work requirements in its Medicaid program, known as TennCare
Investing in rural America would lift nation's economy
The Hill | Posted on April 10, 2018oday, fewer than 15 percent of U.S. businesses are located in rural areas and small towns. Bank loans for amounts less than $1 million, primarily to family-owned small businesses and farms, have dropped by nearly half since 2005. These are warning signs for the basic building-blocks of the economy which serve as the foundation of America’s economic stability. A long-term commitment from Congress and the administration is needed to reverse this trend. he recently passed omnibus budget bill is providing key resources and tools to foster development of energy, telecommunications and other essential services in rural America, including $600 million for high-speed internet access in underserved regions.Already, there are examples of how these services are changing heartland economies. BOLT Fiber Optic Services, a subsidiary of Northeast Oklahoma Electric Cooperative, began providing broadband service in 2015 and the fiber network is directly responsible for new businesses creating hundreds of jobs. And similar stories are playing out across the nation. In 2002, Blue Ridge Mountain EMC began providing broadband in the southern Appalachian region of Georgia and North Carolina. Today, the co-op has linked regional hospitals to a common broadband network and helped facilitate e-connectivity at public schools and libraries across the region.Other sections of the omnibus bill fully fund low-interest government loans or enhance the efficiency of permitting for rural electric programs to improve grid reliability.These are positive steps. But there’s more work to do.
No more 'second-class' treatment, rural utility providers tell Congress
Washington Examiner | Posted on April 10, 2018CEOs from rural power providers will descend on Congress this week with the message that "second-class service" will no longer be tolerated and their customers deserve the same treatment as those who live in cities. “Rural America should expect comparable broadband speeds as urban citizens, and not subject to ‘second-class service." The utilities want key grant programs fully funded under both the Farm Bill and fiscal 2019 budget appropriations, as well as "vehicles to invest in rural broadband,” which means a combination of loans and grants. Rural utilities are nonprofit electric companies that provide service to 42 million people in 47 states.The Agriculture Department’s Rural Utilities Service should provide grants, in combination with loans or cooperative lenders, to help overcome the “high-cost barriers” of building broadband in rural areas, according to the utility association.
Rural Georgia wins big as session ends
Union Recorder | Posted on April 5, 2018This legislative session gave rural Georgia micro hospitals, a new health care-focused think tank and a sizable down payment on economic development initiatives tailored for the state’s beleaguered small towns. But other proposals — including a plan to empower electric cooperatives to provide broadband — just ended up as fodder for the messy tradition that marks the end of every legislative session in Georgia.Some ideas — such as one offering a tax break to people who move to rural counties — never got off the ground.Most of the key measures designed to boost rural parts of the state succeeded, even if they squeaked by after a self-imposed midnight deadline.
Ex-governor: State’s appeal of culvert order incites ‘social unrest’
Capital Press | Posted on April 5, 2018Former Washington Gov. Dan Evans accused the state in a court document Monday of stirring up social unrest by appealing an order to replace fish-blocking culverts. Seattle lawyer Joe Mentor Jr. submitted a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the 92-year-old Evans. The brief supports 21 Western Washington Indian tribes that sued to remove the culverts and restore salmon habitat.
USDA Prioritizes Investments to Address Opioid Crisis in Rural America
DRG News | Posted on April 5, 2018Assistant to the Secretary for Rural Development Anne Hazlett announced that the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is giving funding priority in two key grant programs to address opioid misuse in rural communities. “The opioid epidemic is dramatically impacting prosperity in many small towns and rural places across the country,” Hazlett said. “With this focused investment, we are targeting our resources to be a strong partner to rural communities in building an effective local response to this significant challenge.”USDA is reserving $5 million in the Community Facilities Grant Program and is giving priority to Distance Learning and Telemedicine Grant (DLT) Program applications proposing innovative projects to address the opioid epidemic in rural communities.