rural health

After residents of Nevada, Missouri — a city of nearly 8,300 people near the Kansas border — learned that Barone Alzheimer's Care Center would be closing due to financial hardship, they started organizing in protest.

Interests on both sides of the program — hospitals and drugmakers — say they are at the mercy of a program designed with the best of intentions, now run amok, hijacked by for-profit companies and wealthy hospitals trying to profit from its largesse.

Corner pharmacies, once widespread in large cities and rural hamlets alike, are disappearing from many areas of the country, leaving an estimated 41 million Americans in what are known as drugstore deserts.

On any given night, an estimated 943 people in rural Kansas and 1,569 people in rural Missouri are homeless. But the actual numbers are likely far greater.

Suicide rates increased by nearly 45% in Kansas over the past two decades, but those rates rose even more in sparsely populated rural communities. Plus, OBGYNs in Missouri say COVID-19 is causing severe complications and stillbirths in pregnant people.

Despite vaccinating relatively few people, workers say they're encouraged. “That's 11 or 12 more people that not only got the vaccine, but then will go and tell their family, their friends."

The Pfizer vaccine is free and safe for 12-to-17 year olds, but teen vaccinations in Missouri are far behind other groups in the state.

Shannon County, known for its natural beauty that draws tourists, has one of the lowest COVID vaccination rates in Missouri.

A traveling medical clinic is expanding its reach to better meet the need in rural areas of eastern Missouri. The Rural Parish Clinic’s team of volunteer doctors and nurses treat low-income, uninsured adults out of a 40-foot converted van.

While outsiders blame low rural vaccination rates on vaccine hesitancy, local health officials say the state’s distribution system has made providing shots difficult.

The casual attitude toward the dangers of COVID worries health care leaders in Fort Scott, Kansas.

Most of the patients who are turned away are from rural areas with no mask mandates, said Dr. Heather Harris, Hays Medical Center's medical director.