If there is one thing that Americans can agree on at this moment in our history, it’s that we have an opioid problem. An epidemic that touches every state and county. In fact, we all likely know someone who has become addicted to oxycodone, morphine, fentanyl, or any of the other countless prescription painkillers that […]
What if we woke up tomorrow in a completely different small town? Would we feel at home in Summerville, GA, with 4 colleges just a county over? Or in Hartford, KY, among generations of coal miners? I imagine our neighbors in Greensburg, IN, heading off to the Honda plant every day, would be a little […]
One of my hardworking colleagues just found out that her family’s health insurance premiums are about to go from about $250 to $1200 a month. Upon hearing that, I was tempted to sarcastically exclaim, “Thanks Obama” and rethink my limited support for the Affordable Care Act. But then I looked into the reason her premiums […]
Like I said in my last post, I’ve spent several months staring at county health data. Countyhealthrankings.org has become my de facto homepage. And in that time of poring over numbers and statistics, I fell into a stereotypical mindset that I think is pretty common for Virginians. The picture in my mind was of a […]
As a pastor, death has been a normal part of my professional life. Seminaries prepare us to sit with the dying and the bereaved, to craft a funeral service, and to recognize the place of death in our faith lives. One thing seminary doesn’t prepare us for is difference in shape and scale death takes […]