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A nationwide decline in foster home spots has led to dire situations in some rural areas, including northeastern Nevada, where a state social worker has been pleading with community leaders to help address a shortage that left officials housing children in casino hotels.
After local leaders in rural Nevada reached an impasse over a proposed Planned Parenthood clinic, an anti-abortion activist pitching local abortion bans across the U.S. arrived at their remote City Hall.
Patients in rural northeastern Nevada soon will have fewer providers and resources, after a local hospital decided to close its medical residency program. Nationally, the number of rural residency slots has grown during the past few years but still makes up just 2% of programs and residents nationwide.
Mobile clinics that provided covid-19 testing and vaccines at the peak of the pandemic are now being used to provide a range of health services in hard-to-reach communities. A law passed late last year allows qualified health care centers to use federal grants to expand the fleets.
In a few weeks, pandemic-era emergency boosts to SNAP benefits, formerly known as food stamps, will be rolled back across 32 states, putting more pressure on food pantries to fill the gaps and exacerbating challenges for rural areas, where a greater share of people are enrolled in the program compared with metro areas.
Coastal and politically progressive states have passed stronger paid sick and family leave policies, but many workers in rural America are left out, facing tough decisions when choosing between caring for themselves or sick family members or keeping their jobs.
As the covid-19 pandemic grinds on, Elko County, Nevada, still lacks a public health department. Yet its elected leaders rejected federal funds that could have helped it create one. Decisions like the one in Elko, and ones made by officials with other state and local governments, leave health experts concerned about whether the country's public health infrastructure will be prepared to handle future health challenges.
In Nevada, local health officials are assessing the threat of monkeypox, but their response may be hampered by historically limited public health infrastructure worn thin by the covid-19 pandemic.
Smoke- and ash-filled air can trigger or exacerbate severe respiratory conditions. But the medical specialists who treat these illnesses are often scarce where they are most in need.
Five years after HIV tore through a rural Indiana town as a result of widespread drug use, a syringe and needle exchange program was set up in rural Nevada to prevent a similar event.
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