Thursday, May 23, 2013

05/23/2013 at 7:03am

Editor's Note: We've reported on the recent decline in nonmetro population and published a county-by-county map showing exactly where these changes occurred. In this article excerpted from Amber Waves, the journal of the USDA's Economic Research Service, John Cromartie looks at the underlying patterns of this population trend.

He finds patterns related to both geography and economy. The farther a county is from an urban area, the more likely it is to be losing population or growing at a slower rate than before the recession. He also found that agricultural and manufacturing counties are losing ground, and the big gains that counties with recreational amenities made before 2006 have dropped dramatically.

The question now: Are these temporary changes that will change with an improving economy, or are they permanent?

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05/22/2013 at 1:52pm

Photo by Sam Upshaw Jr.; The Courier-Journal Dr. Ron Waldridge II has a 'team huddle' with medical assistant Wilma Collins as they go through their pre-patient planning process at his practice in Shelbyville, Ky. He says he cannot take on more patients.

Is There a Doctor in the House?Are there enough doctors in rural areas of Kentucky to support the state’s new Medicaid expansion? The expansion will grant access to 308,000 residents who earn 138 percent of the federal poverty level or less, but the federal government lists 47 of the state’s counties are short on healthcare professionals. Despite this, Stephen Williams, Chief Executive Officer of Norton Healthcare, remains hopeful that the new measure will succeed. “I doubt this will turn into a huge problem — although there may be pockets.”

Plans purposed to deal with the issue include increased reliance on community health centers, and attracting more nonphysician health care providers to areas in need.

05/22/2013 at 7:31am

Editor's Note: This article was originally published in the Berkeley Planning Journal, a student publication of the University of California, Berkeley Department of City and Regional Planning.

Most of us have heard of the growing racial wealth gap and the statistics that show how white America continues to diverge from households of color when it comes to building assets, particularly in the form of quality homeownership. While we may tend to think about this disparity in the context of urban and suburban environments, it is crucial to also relate the issue to the households that live on the other 90% of the U.S. landmass, known as rural and small town America.

Click to enlarge.

A recent report from the Housing Assistance Council shows that rural America has diverse racial and ethnic characteristics when taken as a whole. While these regions have a larger percentage of non-Hispanic whites (78%) in comparison to non-rural communities (64%) overall, rural people of color live in a variety of settings, such as Native American lands, the Lower Mississippi Delta, the southern Black Belt and the colonias region along the U.S.-Mexico border. Populations such as migrant and seasonal farmworkers are also often found in rural areas. In examining the poverty rates among non-Hispanic whites and people of color, the gap between the two is wider in rural locations than throughout the U.S. overall. Additionally, the issue of persistent poverty—counties with continually high rates of poverty over the past 20 years—has much to do with these rural communities of color. Large parts of rural regions of color, in addition to several communities in Central Appalachia, make up the vast majority of counties in the U.S. with a history of persistent poverty.

05/21/2013 at 3:02pm

Gene Blevins, Reuters People look through the wreckage of their neighborhood after a tornado struck Moore, Oklahoma, on May 20.

 

Disaster in Oklahoma – Today the nation is focused on Moore, OK, where a tornado left a trail of destruction two miles wide and seventeen miles long. At least 43 have died, and 230 have been injured. Governor Mary Fallin said this morning, that the storms were the “most horrific storms and disasters that this state has ever faced."

The town of Joplin Missouri, which dealt with a similar natural disaster in 2011, has brought together a team of public safety officials that will be sent to help Moore and the surrounding area recover. Joplin also plans to pitch in in the coming days

Rural Center at a Crossroads – The fate of North Carolinas Rural Economic Development Center hangs in the balance as N.C. Senate Republicans take aim at defunding the organization. Proponents of zeroing out the institution say that the organization has become bloated and inefficient over the years, as their board of directors has grown to over fifty members, and the state has no control on how the money is spent. “There is a need to change how it’s set up, to streamline the process.” Says Sen. Harry Brown

However, the center itself says that defunding the organization would cripple rural development. The organization has awarded over $2 billion in grants and created 33,000 jobs since its inception in 1987. “Why would you want to defund it and do away with it? I’m afraid the special needs of rural North Carolina will get lost in that reorganization.” Says Larry Wooten, president of the state’s farm bureau.

05/21/2013 at 6:59am

Photo by Lafayette Online. Benton County is the home of Indiana's first operational wind farm. Each of the farm’s 87 turbines  produces enough electricity to power 600 average American homes per year.

Residents of central Indiana counties overwhelmingly support the development of wind-power farms, a Purdue University College of Agriculture research report says. But opponents of wind-energy development say the study misrepresents community opinion.

The study and its detractors underscore the challenging nature of energy development in the United States, especially for the rural communities where energy is most likely to be produced. 

Purdue researchers looked at public response to the development of wind-energy facilities in three central Indiana counties northwest of Indianapolis. They say 88 percent of people who responded to a mail and online survey supported wind-energy development in their counties.

Indiana residents who oppose the construction of wind turbines say the survey technique the researchers used to gauge public opinion isn’t reliable.

05/20/2013 at 2:30pm

Photo by Shannon Stapleton/Reuters Women-owned businesses are on the rise in McKenzie County

Women Spurring BusinessBusinessweek reports that opportunities are expanding for women in rural western North Dakota, thanks in part to the recent shale boom.  Western North Dakota is shale-oil central, and as more companies arrive to profit off of the shale, more women have started complimentary service businesses to cash in themselves. The progress women workers have made is clear when one looks at their salaries, as they have shot up 22% since 2006, outdoing male gains in the same timeframe.

“There are great opportunities for women. Whatever skill you have, we need it in western North Dakota.” Says Kathy Neset, president of Neset Concealing Service.

Back in Black – A tragic mining disaster that rocked a small town in West Virginia in 2010 is in the news again, this time due to medical experts finding curious issues in the lungs of the deceased. Today a team of pathologists and lung disease experts are expected to show the results of a study regarding the lung tissue in many of the victims that died during the Upper Big Branch mine disaster. 

The researchers believe it is new evidence of a resurgence of Black Lung, a once common disease that afflicted many in the coal mines.

Especially alarming is the number of younger miners that were found to have black lung. “There were probably some intense exposures and excessive exposures over a short period of time. That raises some concerns." Says lead researcher Robert Cohen.

05/18/2013 at 4:41pm

Gregory Rec/Portland Press HeraldA 2-year-old watches his father during a gun rally in Wiscasset, Maine, in March 2013. Dr. Myers wonders whether a holstered sidearm is more likely to protect a child or hurt it because of an accident.

First the usual disclaimers. I grew up with as many guns as hammers in the house. When we had to move into the city from the Ozarks when I was 11, I improvised a place in the basement where I could shoot targets with a .22. My first “real” purchase when I started working a year later was a Mossberg target rifle. I've hunted things from squirrel to moose, though I decided it wasn't very sporting. In the last few years I've had to put down various farm animals.

In my medical work, I’ve practiced less and managed more than a lot of docs, but the following is a sampling of my experience with shootings.

As an intern I was putting an agitated drunk to bed with the assistance of the policeman who brought him to the emergency room. Suddenly the policeman's revolver was in the drunk's hand in my face. I grabbed the drunk's wrist, pushed it down and away. The first shot hit a 13-year-old girl passing in the hall. The second shot hit the framing in the wall, thereby missing my fellow intern in the next examining room. That day I learned to be skeptical of the “good guy with a gun” theory.

A few months later a teenage girl was brought into the same hospital. She had been sitting on a log teaching a Bible class to younger kids when she had an apparent seizure and tumbled backward down a brushy, rocky slope. She was unresponsive, had lots of scratches and seemed flaccid on one side. Her skull films showed a .22 slug just on the edge of the film about halfway down her neck. Her spinal cord was cut on one side. The police found a person who had been hunting squirrel over a half mile away. There I learned it really isn't safe to hunt in a populated area with even the smallest caliber rifle.