With the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in the news because of proposed cuts, we took another look at the data. The bottom line: Rural areas cluster near the top of counties that are most reliant on SNAP. [node:read-more:link]
Communities should consider the needs of both long-term and acute medical care as they create networks for telemedicine. Whether it’s providing lifesaving stroke treatment or caring for chronic conditions like addiction or wound management, different treatments require different tools. [node:read-more:link]
A native Kansan returns home to find that the broken promises of commodity agriculture have destroyed a way of life. Most Americans experience Kansas from inside their cars, eight hours of cruise-controlled tedium on their way to someplace else. Even residents of the state’s eastern power centers glimpse its vast rural spaces at 85 mph, if at all.But on recent trips back, I wanted to really see my home state—so I avoided I-70, the zippy east/west thoroughfare. The slower pace paid off in moments of heart-stopping beauty. [node:read-more:link]
A Virginia state senator filed suit against the U.S. Forest Service on Wednesday, claiming that federal officials are illegally blocking access to a road in the Jefferson National Forest where several people are protesting construction of a natural gas pipeline. State Sen. [node:read-more:link]
Maine lawmakers overrode Gov. Paul LePage’s veto of an adult-use marijuana regulatory bill Wednesday, putting the state on track to regulate a retail market that has been in limbo since voters legalized recreational marijuana use in 2016. The proposal that survived the Republican governor’s pen was Maine’s second attempt to create a framework for the system after a veto of an earlier bill was upheld in 2017, sending a special committee that was convened to handle the issue back to rehash it. [node:read-more:link]
Gov. Nathan Deal opened a new door of opportunity for economic revitalization for rural Georgia on Wednesday afternoon when he signed House Bill 951, creating a Center for Rural Prosperity and Innovation that will be housed at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College. [node:read-more:link]
Niles officials awarded a contract for textile recycling, such as used clothing and rags, to a company last month which will begin pick up services in late June. Village trustees signed a contract with Great Lakes Recycling, which runs Simple Recycling, at their April 24 board meeting. The contract is expected to earn the village $900 in direct revenue and save Niles taxpayers nearly $28,000 by diverting nearly 600 tons of trash from landfills each year. [node:read-more:link]
A new land bill introduced in Congress Wednesday seeks to set aside more than a half-million acres of wilderness in Utah’s Emery County.Backed by Utah Rep. John Curtis and Sen. [node:read-more:link]
Located in the sprawling farmland of southern Colorado’s San Luis Valley, five hours away from Denver, the closest major city, Alamosa can feel about as far removed from D.C. politics as you can get. But not when it comes to immigration enforcement: More than half of the town’s 15,000 people are Hispanic, many of them immigrants from Mexico and Guatemala who now find themselves in the crosshairs of the government’s immigration crackdown. It wasn’t just immigrants and their families who felt targeted. [node:read-more:link]
Doctors who are cutting back on prescribing opioids increasingly are opting for gabapentin, a safer, non-narcotic drug recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By doing so, they may be putting their opioid-using patients at even greater risk.Recently, gabapentin has started showing up in a substantial number of overdose deaths in hard-hit Appalachian states. [node:read-more:link]
