Shasta County Supervisors heard presentations from 20 different organizations during a November 12 six-hour marathon meeting on opioid fund use. In the end, the Board took no definitive action, deciding instead to continue discussing details of many of the proposals during an upcoming meeting, likely in December or January.

Supervisor Kevin Crye, who’s pushed for quick deployment of at least some of the nearly $39 million in opioid funds the County is scheduled to receive, seemed to soften his stance by the end of the meeting, acknowledging that developing a plan to deploy funds could take eighteen months. Yesterday, November 13, Crye emphasized to Shasta Scout that he feels youth programs require the most urgent action saying he wants to make decisions related to those in December or January.

The timeline matters. At least two seats on the Board will change early next year, with Matt Plummer assuming Supervisor Patrick Jones’ seat, and Allen Long taking Supervisor Tim Garman’s. Who will hold the fifth seat on the Board is still uncertain, as Shasta County awaits the results of the November 5 election. Supervisor Mary Rickert, who currently represents District 3, currently trails Corky Harmon by about 1,000 votes–but less than half of Shasta County’s ballots have been counted so far.

Supervisor Chris Kelstrom told his fellow Board members during the meeting that he felt it was important to wait to make funding decisions until the new Board members are seated in early 2025. He suggested meanwhile, that Shasta County’s Health and Human Services Agency could produce a comprehensive analysis of what the needs are, saying the process so far feels rushed.

Garman agreed, quoting a Bible verse on the importance of seeking wise counsel and emphasizing that the Board has not yet sought the advice of experts in the field of substance use disorders. Garman suggested forming an advisory commission to assess current needs and advise on how the funds should be used, something that Supervisor Rickert has also repeatedly suggested.

“I like the idea of having some sort of a committee or a council oversee this a little bit,” Garman continued,  “because there’s so much (that’s) needed.”

Representatives from the Good News Rescue Mission took a similar stance, stepping to the podium to present during the meeting then instead announcing a decision to withdraw the Mission’s application for funding.

Speaking to Shasta Scout after, Mission Director Jonathan Anderson explained the decision to rescind the funding request, saying he feels strongly that the process being used by the Board so far isn’t the best approach for the community.

“It’s an issue of principle for me,” Anderson said, “I think sometimes money can make people blind. What’s right for the community is having the right people at the table putting together the proper strategic plan.”

Supervisor-elect Plummer also spoke, advocating for strategic planning and cautioning the Board to carefully assess the gaps in current community response in order to deploy the money most successfully. 

During Board discussion, Deputy County CEO Erin Bertain expressed her hesitation about moving too quickly towards funding decisions. She pointed out to supervisors that they need to think about strategic concerns such as whether the budget details of each proposal they’re considering meet the allowed uses.

Cash flow is also an important consideration, Bertain noted. While the County will receive at least $38.9 million in opioid settlement funds to spend over the next fifteen years, only $10.5 million is currently in the bank–making it important for the County to appropriately forecast specific timelines for the projects they decide to support.

CEO David Rickert seemed to summarize many individuals concerns when he told the Board towards the end of the meeting that it’s clear that the opioid fund use decision is “a much bigger project than we realized.”

Jones seemed to agree, noting that the Board had shown interest in the majority of proposals submitted during the meeting.

“There are too many yeses here,” Jones said. “Clearly we’re going to run out of money.”

Organizations whose proposals will return for tentative future funding discussions by the Board include Shasta County Substance Use Coalition, Shasta College, River Recovery Services, Visions Of the Cross, Mayers Memorial Hospital, Renewed Life Medical Group, Results Media, Empire Recovery Center, and Hill Country Community Clinic.

Some organizations interested in providing prevention services for youth were also asked to return as a collaborative group. Those include Youth Options Shasta and Raising Shasta, but could also include other agencies. The Board will also continue to consider four County Departments including the Sheriff and Public Defender as well as Veteran Services and Probation.

Crye told Shasta Scout yesterday that while some organizations are returning for future discussions, whether the Board will fund any of them is still uncertain. He said he believes the majority of opioid funding decisions could wait until next year with the contributions of newly-seated supervisors and a “thoughtful strategic plan”.

In contrast, decisions about funding for youth substance use prevention, Crye said, should be made as soon as possible, either in December or January, to ensure they can be rolled our during the next school year. He emphasized that he “already knows for certain” how he’ll vote when it comes to youth prevention programs.

“If it meets certain metrics in my mind that I’ve set forth on outcomes,” Crye said, “I’ll support it.”

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Do you have a correction to share? Email us: editor@shastascout.org.

This is the second in a series of interviews, in which we will ask rural candidates, elected office holders, political consultants and organizers what lessons are to be learned from the 2024 General Election. 

Keith McCants, 42, is the chair of the Democratic Party in Bryan County, Georgia. Located southwest of Savanah, this half-rural and half-suburban county is among the fastest growing in the state. On November 5, 68% of voters in Bryan County cast ballots for Donald Trump.

McCants describes himself as a “conservative Democrat” and identifies as a Blue Dog. The Blue Dog Coalition is a largely rural caucus of moderate Democrats in the House of Representatives. It is led by Reps. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Wash.-3), Jared Golden (Maine 2)  and Mary Peltola (Alaska-at large), all three of whom represent House districts that Trump won. At its peak in 2009, the caucus boasted 54 members. It now has 11. Politico reports that the Blue Dog Caucus was “decimated in the 2010 election and has since drifted ideologically from pro-corporation centrists to pro-worker populists.”

A member of the United Steelworkers Local 795, McCants works at a local manufacturing plant. He is the father of three children, ages 21, 15 and 5, and lives with his wife in Richmond Hill, a suburb of 19,013 outside of Savannah that has doubled in population since 2010. McCants grew up in the Black Belt town of Oglethorpe, the county seat of Macon County, where he served on city council from 2013 to 2018.

McCants is critical of the way the Harris-Walz campaign was managed in Georgia and thinks that the Georgia Democratic Party, unable to see beyond the Atlanta metro area, has forsaken both Black and white rural voters. We asked him what might have been done differently.

How did you get into politics?

I was just watching CNN one day, back in 1998, and I saw Sam Nunn and Max Cleland, two former Georgia Democratic U.S. Senators, doing an interview, and I’m like, “What are they talking about?” I remember the day clearly.

That year, my junior year in high school, I volunteered for Sanford Bishop, the House member for Georgia’s 2nd district. It was something I did on a whim. I started liking it. I liked the retail politics, the hand shaking, the back slapping, the rallies.

Once I got out of high school, I worked on other campaigns until I first ran for office myself in 2013, for city council in my hometown of Oglethorpe, in Macon County, which is in the Black Belt.

No one recruited me. No one told me to do it. I just ran on my own because I saw a need for change in my hometown. It was the same cast of characters. I knew they were all good people, but they just didn’t do anything. I had been going all over the state doing this and that for other candidates and helping other people. So, I thought, why not come home and make a difference in my hometown.

I lost by four votes the first time. But the guy I ran against decided to step down and I was asked if I would take on his term, which I did. I served five years on the city council.

I really got known across rural Georgia because of my blog, Peanut Politics. I was the only Democrat who spoke to rural issues and for rural Democrats as a whole. I managed to build up a solid following. I developed trust among folks running for office and current and former elected officials, especially among Republicans. They’ve been trying to get me to switch over for the last 10 years.

As chair of the Bryan County Democrats, what’s your main takeaway from the election?

It was one of the most disappointing things that I’ve experienced in my 24 years of being an advocate for rural Georgia. It was a debacle.

I’m not surprised by the result. There was no ground game whatsoever from the Harris campaign. There was no get-out-the-vote efforts whatsoever. This was a billion-dollar campaign, and the question being asked right now is where did all that money go? Because it did not make it on the ground here in Georgia. A million dollars would have made the difference in her winning this state.

There’s a lot of anger towards the Harris campaign. There’s anger towards Biden. But a lot of us rural Democrats down here were not surprised by the result because we didn’t see any action from the Harris campaign whatsoever. It was all Atlanta, and Atlanta some more. Harris made one trip to Savannah in late August for a rally, but other than that, it was strictly metro Atlanta.

So what do you think should be done?

There’s an effort right now here in Georgia to remove the current Democratic Party state chairwoman Rep. Nikema Williams. It’s being led by Sen. Jon Ossoff and I understand Sen. Rafael Warnock is behind the effort as well.

But to me, it shouldn’t fall squarely on her shoulders because this is a problem that we’ve been having here for the last 15 years. It’s just different leadership with the same results. So you have calls for a total wipeout of the current leadership and installation of new people on top of the Georgia Democratic Party. But all that will not matter if they don’t get down into the rural areas because this is where the Democratic Party is hurting.

Did you all know that in the Black Belt region of this state President Trump carried four majority Black counties, Washington, Early, Jefferson and Dooly? When I saw that, I knew right then Harris had no shot to win Georgia.

For readers who aren’t familiar with Georgia’s Black Belt, could you explain its significance in state politics?

The Black Belt stretches from Augusta across central Georgia all the way down into the 2nd congressional district, in the southwest. Without support in the Black Belt counties no Democrat can win statewide.

It’s just a fact. The Black Belt was the primary reason why Senators Warnock and Ossoff won their elections in 2020 and 2021. They campaigned in these counties and invested large sums of money.

The Black Belt is largely poor. It’s heavily agricultural. It doesn’t have a lot of income. And it has underperforming school systems. There are a lot of disadvantages in the Black Belt.

But if you go and talk to the voters in these areas, they will show up. And this past Tuesday, they did not show up for Harris because they were not being courted. A lot of these voters just decided to stay home. They’re like, “Nobody’s talking to me. I got the mailer in my mailbox. Yes, Kamala is a black woman, but what is she offering me and my family?”

The thinking was that black voters would just turn out because Kamala is a Black woman. It doesn’t work like that. That was a major miscalculation. You have to work these areas, you have to cultivate these areas.

So where were the decisions made that led to this disconnect? Is it the national campaign? Is it the state party? Is it Atlanta based? Who do you see as being implicated?

It’s a little bit of everything. Ever since former Gov. Roy Barnes (D) lost in 2002, it’s been pretty much an Atlanta-focused state party. And following 2010, when Barnes tried to reclaim the governor’s mansion, there was a full acceleration to the left in the Democratic Party to try to mimic the Democratic National Committee, which was a detriment to us up until 2020 when we had Sens. Ossoff and Warnock win.

But the activists in the state party, the organizers, they are not comfortable around rural people. It’s just a fact. They don’t want to travel to middle Georgia or southern Georgia. They don’t want to spend the time here. They don’t want to invest here. They’ll drive through these areas to get to Savannah or Columbus or Albany, but they will not stop in Swainsboro. They won’t stop in Eastman. They won’t stop in Quitman.

There’s a discomfort amongst the Atlanta crowd with rural folks like myself. We do have rural progressives here. But for the most part, we’re mostly middle of the road or more independent-minded, even the Black Democrats in rural areas like myself. I’m a conservative Democrat. I’m an NRA member. I’m a small business owner. I’m a member of the local Chamber of Commerce down here.

They call Democrats like myself Republican-lites because we don’t adhere to what they believe in Midtown Atlanta. So they look at someone like me, and say, “You don’t believe in that. You’re a Republican, kid. You’re not one of us.” I’ve heard that for many years. But it’s voters like myself they continue to lose each election cycle. And they need voters like me to remain in the party, Black males in particular, because if we continue to leave the Democratic Party, the state party is going to be in trouble. I haven’t left the Democratic Party, but I’ve given some thought to becoming a full-fledged independent because of what happened.

I don’t care that the majority of the population is located in and around Atlanta. Georgia is not like Virginia, where if you carry northern Virginia and you pretty much win the state. It’s not Pennsylvania where you carry the eastern part of the state and Pittsburgh. You must have a winning coalition here in Georgia. You’ve got to get those rural Black Belt counties if you’re going to win statewide.

And right now, until they show a willingness to come down here to invest and to campaign and to talk to us, it’s going to be the same old song.

We don’t have tall buildings down here. We don’t have Starbucks. We don’t have the latest things that metros have. But we do matter. Rural voters do matter.

What did you think of Obama coming down to Atlanta to encourage black men to vote for Harris?

It really didn’t have any effect on Black men because down here the majority of Black men who did vote, the ones that I know, they voted for Trump.

They voted for Trump because he came across as strong and masculine.

The Democratic Party here in Georgia has to move away from being this very soft and sensitive-to-everything party that they’ve become, or they’re going to continue to bleed male voters. It’s a party that has been catering to female voters. Let a man be a man. White male voters left a long time ago. Black male voters are not leaving in droves, but a little bit by a little bit each cycle. They’re not necessarily going Republican, but they’re going independent.

I understand women out vote men, but everything you heard, especially in the Harris campaign, even out here in Georgia, it’s all geared towards women in the suburbs, Black women, who are the backbone of Democratic Party.

And then you’re focusing on voters who hardly vote. These are low-income, low-information voters who don’t bother to vote but are the main ones who complain about what’s being taken away and what’s being cut.

That’s been my frustration for a long time with the Democratic Party. We always try to care for the downtrodden and the less fortunate, and I understand that, but, I’m just being real with you all, those voters just don’t vote.

You can have barbecues all day long, and fish fries. You can bring celebrities in, like Harris did, and these people still don’t vote. So my thinking is, why waste all your time?

What did you think about the Harris campaign’s messaging around the economy?

She had a good message, but the messenger was the issue. She just wasn’t able to make the sale. She wasn’t able to convince voters that, yes, I’ll be better for your pocketbooks.

And then there was her inability, her unwillingness, to distance herself from President Biden. She could have come out and said, “I would have done this differently if I were president.” That cost her a lot.

Here in Richmond Hill, the Trump campaign had all these signs along Interstate I-95, “Trump low prices. Kamala high prices.” They resonated. It was simple.

If you were head of the Georgia Democratic Party what would your agenda be?

They need to get back to being the party of the working-class men and women in this state, and not worry so much about these cultural issues like transgender people playing sports and what bathroom they go into. Those are the issues that torpedoed the Democratic Party. That’s not to say they’re not important, but they put those issues first and foremost at the expense of families like myself, young families who work every day. We’re not concerned about that. If it was me, I would bring this party away from cultural-identity politics into a more bread-and-butter, kitchen-table issue related party. We used to be a party like that in the 1990s, in the early 2000s.

We’ve gone so far to the left, trying to appease the left flank because they have the money. They’re the ones who fund the candidates like Stacey Abrams. And I like Stacey Abrams, but a lot of her money came from groups like that and she came out here pushing issues that don’t appeal to mainstream Georgians. And if candidates don’t push those issues, then they’ll cut you off financially and you’re at a disadvantage against your Republican counterparts.

I would also stress better candidate recruitment because our recruitment here in Georgia has been abysmal for the last decade. We just had some of the worst candidates run for office.

What about the labor movement and support for union organizing? Is that something that would resonate in rural Georgia?

It doesn’t because outside of the cities, the unions are not that big of an influence here in Georgia. It doesn’t carry the same weight as up in Michigan or Pennsylvania. Although I’m a union member, the United Steel Workers, up in Savannah.

What about the role of the churches in Georgia? According to the exit polls White evangelicals comprised 29% of the Georgia electorate and 92%of them voted for Trump.

Religion plays a major role in the rural areas. I’m a Southern Baptist. The Democrats at one point used to be the party that paid attention to what I call the Christian vote or the value voter. The party has gotten away from that.

Again, it’s all about a comfort level. The left flank of the party doesn’t understand that faith plays a big part in life across rural Georgia. If you’re not willing to learn about why our faith is very important to us Democrats who believe in God—I don’t care what anybody says, we believe in our Lord and Savior—it’s sad me. That’s where we’ve come up short as a party.

What do you see as the strategy for rebuilding the trust of rural voters in Georgia?

First and foremost, we should install a new leader of the state Democratic Party. I have my pick. I like John Barrow, former congressman in the 12th district. He lost to Rick Allen in 2014.

Barrow is a rural Democrat, and he still has an apparatus in place from his statewide run in 2018 for Secretary of State and from his campaign for the Georgia Supreme Court this year. He would be able to rebrand the Democratic Party and turn the page from the old to the new. He understands rural Georgia, he understands our way of life. He understands our politics, what will work, what won’t work. And most importantly—I’m just going to say it—he’s white.

The Democratic Party has become too Black and too urban. A lot of white moderates have gone to the Republican Party as a result. They think, the Democratic Party is for Black people.

These are conversations that I have on a daily basis. They say, “The Democratic Party—and, Keith, I like you, and I’ll vote for you in a minute—but your party, they are only concerned about different identity groups, and we white voters don’t have a place unless we’re white and we’re liberal.”

That notion of Georgia Democratic Party being too Black, it’s true. If you look at our state legislature, for example, we only have one rural white Democrat left in the entire state. That’s Debbie Buckner over in Johnson County, who is in the State House. In the State Senate, we have zero.

So as much as the Democratic Party talks about diversity, if you don’t have any whites in the party, I don’t call that diverse.

The Democratic Party has an image problem, a branding problem, and it’s going to take someone who knows how to really shake off those connotations.

I’ve heard that Keisha Lance Bottoms, the former mayor of Atlanta, is someone that’s being pushed to take over the Democratic Party, and I like Keisha Lance Bottoms, but she’s not the right pick at this time. She’s still from Atlanta.

If she, or whoever, is willing to travel to these different counties and listen to concerns of Democrats who don’t live in the cities, then they’ll get a better understanding of what’s wrong, how to deal with it, and how to craft a message that appeals to all Georgians—not a message that just appeals to their friends in Atlanta or Gwinnett County, Cobb County or Clayton County, but to everybody: metro Atlanta, south Georgia, down around White Cross, around the swamps, around the Wild Grass region of south central Georgia, the peanut fields. But it’s not going to be fixed overnight. These problems have been here with us for a long time.

The Democratic Party has to listen to the people on the ground, the people who are at their kitchen tables every night and not the elites who are living the good life. Until they get back to being the party of Jefferson and Jackson, it’s going to be a tough row to hoe.

What advice would you give a young person in rural Georgia, who like you 26 years ago, wants to get involved in politics?

I would tell him or her, don’t wait for someone to tell you to do something. If it’s in your heart to do something like this, then go for it, step up. The rewards will outweigh the negative aspects of it.

But it takes work, it takes time, it takes commitment, it takes dedication. And, it took me over 20 years to get to this point, and it’s not easy.

Go with your gut and don’t worry about it. People are gonna talk about you regardless of what you do, whether it’s good or bad. I had a lot of that: “Kid, you don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

If you feel that sense of urgency within you to make a difference in your community like I did, then you go for it. And chances are most times you will be successful.

The post As Goes the Black Belt, So Goes Georgia appeared first on Barn Raiser.

By Taylor Knopf

Just as substance use experts celebrated a somewhat mysterious drop in drug overdose deaths across North Carolina, Hurricane Helene blew through the western part of the state, causing death and widespread property damage. In the storm’s aftermath, many residents found themselves without homes and businesses and facing an uncertain future.

For harm reductionists like Hill Brown, the southern director of Faith in Harm Reduction, Helene’s impact raised serious concerns. Brown knew that the disruption to the local drug supply, coupled with the stress of losing housing, could lead to an uptick in overdoses in the coming months. 

Over the past month, Brown, who lives in western North Carolina, has been pushing to get the overdose reversal drug, naloxone, into the hands of more people. Brown said she was surprised to find that some rural areas that had previously resisted harm reduction efforts, including naloxone distribution, have begun to embrace these life-saving tools in the wake of Helene.

“Once the [drug] supply comes back online, and people haven’t had good access to their dealers or to whatever supply they were using, there is going to be an uptick in overdoses, because we just don’t know what the supply is going to look like,” Brown said. 

“If we’re talking about a crisis where lots of people are losing their housing, or their housing is becoming unlivable because of flooding, then people are going to be stressed out, and they’re going to do things that they know how to do to cope.”

This threat comes when the overdose crisis in North Carolina has shown signs of improvement — at least on paper. The latest data reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicts about a 30 percent decrease in overdose deaths in North Carolina from May 2023 to May 2024, a statistic that will be confirmed once death certificates are finalized. 

Nationally, the CDC estimates roughly a 13 percent decrease in overdose deaths for the same time period, based on provisional death data. 

These numbers will likely shift because the data is incomplete right now, and North Carolina has been particularly slow in reporting its overdose death data to the federal agency, according to a note that initially topped the latest CDC report. Spokesperson Summer Tonizzo, with the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, told NC Health News that this is an indication that North Carolina has a high number of “pending” deaths.

“These are cases being investigated by NC’s Medical Examiner System which continues to struggle with rising caseloads and staff vacancies — both of which have negatively impacted the system’s ability to timely close pending death records,” Tonizzo wrote in an email.

Even so, North Carolina epidemiologists say, all indicators point to a significant decrease in overdose deaths. But as they dig into the data, a more complex picture emerges — one marked by uneven progress and disparities affecting marginalized communities. 

Cautiously optimistic 

Those ongoing pressures in the medical examiner system means it takes a long time to certify death reports that go through the state’s medical examiner’s office. North Carolina’s last complete year of finalized overdose death data is 2022. 

“We’re almost at the end of 2024. It’s not fast enough,” Mary Beth Cox, an epidemiologist who tracks substance use at the North Carolina Division of Public Health told a NC Opioid and Prescription Drug Abuse Advisory Committee meeting in September. 

Because there will always be some lag in the data, researchers like Cox look to some early indicators, such as emergency department visits, to track the state’s progress in addressing the overdose crisis. Since 2018, her department has been putting out monthly reports on overdose trends seen in emergency departments across the state. The latest report shows emergency department visits are down consistently in 2024 over the same period of time last year. For example, 1,055 overdose visits were reported in August 2024 while 1,518 were reported in August 2023.

Another early indicator researchers look at is 911 calls seeking help for an overdose. Nationally, first responders report that those calls are down 16 percent in October 2024 from October 2023. 

But these systems don’t paint a clear enough picture, Cox said. 

“If we’re seeing a decrease in [emergency department] data, does that actually mean a decrease in overdoses? We don’t know. It just means people aren’t going to the [emergency department],” she explained. “If we see an increase in [emergency department] visits, you might say, at face value, that’s a bad thing. But it could mean more people are getting connected to care.”

“Without the death data to supplement, it’s really hard to know what’s going on,” Cox said.

Her team has worked with the chief medical examiner’s office to put out an additional report every month on suspected overdose deaths. Their most recent report shows a 27 percent decrease in suspected overdose deaths in September 2024 from September 2023. 

North Carolina Attorney General (now governor-elect) Josh Stein attended the meeting and applauded the group for their tireless work to address the opioid crisis. His office played a key role leading the multi-state legal challenges that resulted in $1.5 billion in opioid settlement money for North Carolina. 

“We are starting to see some hopeful developments on the horizon,” Stein said in September. “Obviously, we are not naive. We know the work is not done. There is so much more to do. But it’s appropriate to see and appreciate that something is better today than it was yesterday because folks have been working really hard for that to happen.”

Cox cautioned that these decreases don’t appear to be uniform across all demographics. “This is still very provisional data, very subject to change. But we’re seeing it across multiple indicators that historically marginalized populations, particularly our Black communities, are still experiencing a slight increase.”

A recent analysis of national data by KFF (formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation) found that white people have experienced the greatest drop in rate of overdose deaths, and Black and Indigenous communities are still battling disproportionately higher rates of overdose deaths. 

While the overall trend offers glimmers of hope, Cox acknowledged the sobering reality behind the numbers — nine people are dying by overdose every day in North Carolina. 

“That’s a lot of people still,” Cox said. “Certainly we’re headed in the right direction, but it’s a whole lot of death. 

“Every one of those deaths is preventable.”

Not the full picture

Those who work in harm reduction, like Michelle Mathis, executive director of Olive Branch Ministry, say the state’s surveillance data fails to capture the reality they see on the ground. Mathis’ ministry serves people who use drugs in the foothills/Western Piedmont area of North Carolina. Olive Branch offers multiple fixed syringe exchange sites and mobile programs.

“The trends that we see — and when I talk to other agencies as well — they’re not seeing this big downward reporting in overdoses,” she said. 

She said that harm reduction workers always ask participants: Are you aware of any overdoses or have you personally experienced an overdose since the last time we saw you? Their answers are consistently recorded, but Mathis said the state health department only takes up that  data once a year to include in an annual report. 

“I have argued for this for as long as syringe services have been legal in the state. … We have to have some kind of monthly reporting mechanism,” she said.

Mathis said the majority of people that participate in Olive Branch’s exchange do not call 911 or go to the hospital when someone overdoses. 

“Perhaps overdoses are not necessarily down, but people have access to more Narcan — because of harm reduction agencies — and so they are not as prone to being involved with EMS and the hospitals,” she said.

She added that a big reason her participants say they hesitate to call 911 during an overdose is fear of the state’s “death by distribution” law, which has been strengthened by the state legislature since it was enacted in 2019. The law allows prosecutors to charge someone with second degree murder if they sell drugs to someone who then dies of an overdose. Advocates say that the line between drug dealer and drug user is blurry, as people often buy and sell drugs from their friends and people they use with, who might not be what most would consider a “dealer,” per se. 

Advocates say this law deters people from seeking help.

Brown, who has worked on advancing harm reduction efforts in Mitchell, Yancey and Buncombe counties, also said it’s hard to make sense of a reported drop in overdoses after witnessing the ever-changing illegal drug supply and people’s fear of potential death by distribution charges. 

Why are overdose deaths declining?

These huge drops in overdose deaths being reported in North Carolina and around the country are puzzling to many. Substance use experts at the Street Drug Analysis Lab at the University of North Carolina say that a 15 percent to 20 percent decrease in drug overdoses would be “unprecedented.” 

“To our knowledge, no public health intervention in the United States has ever achieved this benchmark,” members of the lab wrote in a recent blog post. “Something has changed. And that this is happening without central coordination is a big deal. It has major implications for the way we think about overdose prevention interventions.”

Adams Sibley, social behavioral scientist with UNC lab, co-authored the lengthy blog post, which digs into the many leading hypotheses for the mysterious drop — from increased naloxone distribution to law enforcement operations at the border to removal of barriers to addiction treatment. 

Sibley also presented to the NC Opioid and Prescription Drug Abuse Advisory Committee in September and said the decrease is likely a combination of many things, including the presence of xylazine in the street drug supply and a shift from injecting substances to snorting or smoking. 

Xylazine, a veterinary tranquilizer, is an additive that has been increasingly found in the illegal drug supply added to fentanyl or heroin. It can cause nasty wounds and potentially deadly skin infections at the site of injection. 

“There’s a hypothesis that xylazine is one contributor to the drop in overdose deaths in a positive way,” Sibley explained. “Xylazine gives fentanyl legs, which means people may be using fentanyl less throughout the day because it’s prolonging the perceived effect of fentanyl. Xylazine also causes these skin injuries, and so it might be encouraging people to switch to smoking.”

Switching mode of drug consumption from injecting to smoking or snorting is a harm reduction measure because people use smaller amounts of drugs at a time. And smoking has surpassed injecting as the most common way people use drugs, according to the CDC. There are several reasons someone might switch to smoking, Sibley said. 

“One is that if you’ve been injecting for a long time, you may not have a lot of places left to inject,” he said. “You might have scarred tissue, collapsed veins, abscesses, etc., and so smoking is a feasible option. The second reason is dose titration. It’s easier to pace yourself when you’re smoking as compared to when you’re injecting. So this is a rational choice.”

Mathis said she has witnessed a shift toward smoking in participants of Olive Branch Ministry’s syringe exchange programs. She noted that the law that legalized syringe services programs does not allow for the distribution of smoking and snorting supplies.

“So we see — and we want to acknowledge — that change in mode of consumption is contributing greatly to this massive positive trend,” she said. “Yet state statute does not allow us to distribute the supplies which could really help boost this trend if we could legally do it.”

Sibley reminded the audience gathered in September that it’s important to stay humble, examine the data closely and listen to people who use drugs. 

“We are not always in control of the numbers and the trends,” he said. “We know treatments are working. We know naloxone is working. But there may be reasons that overdose deaths are dropping that are out of our control.”

The post NC drug overdose deaths appear to be dropping. Why? appeared first on North Carolina Health News.

Dozens of residents packed into a room at the Christiansburg Library on Thursday for a meeting on the effects of Hurricane Helene-related flooding on the Radford Army Ammunition Plant. 

As the evening wore on, some became frustrated with what they were hearing: Toxic chemicals had washed from the plant into the New River, and this was the first they’d learned of it, six weeks after it happened. 

“This isn’t how you inform the public,” Georgia Doremus said, interrupting a U.S. Army representative.

Her words were directed at a handful of representatives from the Radford Army Ammunition Plant; BAE Systems, a government contractor that operates the plant; and various environmental agencies, who sat at the front of a room that had been filled with a few dozen members of the community. It was the first time the group had addressed the public directly after the remnants of Hurricane Helene devastated the region with widespread flooding and wind damage in late September. 

Floodwaters ripped open the doors of a warehouse at the Radford Army Ammunition Plant — known locally as the arsenal — and swept 13 containers filled with toxic material into the New River in a 31-foot storm surge. Tens of thousands of pounds of wastewater used to create munitions at the plant was said to have been released into the river. 

“I’m furious,” Doremus told the panel earlier that evening. “I can’t believe it took you a month to tell the community about this.”

What was in those containers, and why are residents concerned?

Each of the 13 tanks contained 275 gallons of dibutyl phthalate, a clear, oily liquid used to make rocket fuel. The National Toxicity Program’s Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction has said it’s an endocrine disruptor, connected to decreased fertility as well as liver and kidney toxicity. It’s been deemed hazardous by the Environmental Protection Agency.

As of Monday, four containers, also called totes, had been located, two of which were damaged and had released their contents. 

That means there could be 3,025 gallons of DBP waiting to be found along the river, either sealed safely in the barrels or potentially free-flowing in the waterway or on the bank.

Carla Givens, environmental director with BAE Systems, said the floodwaters washed wastewater containing calcium sulfate back out with it — 127,500 pounds of water that had not yet been deemed safe to be discharged into the river. She also said there’s a possibility that up to 700 gallons of diesel fuel were released from tractors and emergency generators that were submerged in the flood. 

Three chemicals were released in the late-September flood: petroleum, calcium sulfate and dibutyl phthalate. The dibutyl phthalate is expected to sink to the bottom of the river, which means bottom-dwelling aquatic animals are most likely to be affected by its presence in the river, Givens said. 

Calcium sulfate can cause irritation to eyes, skin and the upper respiratory system, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

Residents said they were not notified of the incident until Thursday evening’s community meeting, one of a few held by RAAP on an irregular schedule each year.

“While they were touting their community service functions, they ignored repeated calls to inform the community of their functions and failures,” said Alan Moore, a resident who attended the meeting. “To me, it was another infuriating meeting with a government facility that shows no regard for the community they’ve operated in for over 80 years.” 

The facility was fined by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality a number of times, including in 2024, 2023 and twice in 2012 for releasing “excessive levels of toxins” into the New River. The Radford plant was reported to be the facility that released the highest amount of toxic chemicals into the air, water and land in 2022, according to a report released by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality in 2024.

Community members speak out

Sarah McGee, who lives one house away from the river, said she learned of the missing totes “by chance” at that Thursday community meeting. 

At the meeting, she asked whether it’s safe for her grandkids to play in the river. She said she didn’t receive a direct answer.

“I want us to be safe,” McGee said. “I love that river, and our family has a deep appreciation for that environment.”

At Thursday’s meeting, Givens said that the situation was reported to Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality, as required by law.

Irina Calos with the DEQ said residents are advised to avoid floodwaters and flooded areas. She said the DEQ has not implemented any special water quality monitoring associated with the impacts of Hurricane Helene. 

“Any contamination that has been released from the totes has long washed down the river, such that we do not expect any long-term negative impacts to water quality,” she said in an email. 

As far as notifying the community goes, Calos said state law requires DEQ to share information “when the Virginia Department of Health determines that the discharge may be detrimental to the public health or the Department determines that the discharge may impair beneficial uses of state waters.” 

When nature overwhelms planning

Givens said during the meeting that though some precautions had been taken prior to the storm, the 13 chemical barrels left in the warehouse were “predicted to be not impacted substantially.” They were later submerged in the storm surge. 

She said requirements to notify emergency agencies of the chemical release were executed during flooding, and there is “no reason to believe public health was jeopardized.”

Givens said BAE has contracted with drone companies to fly over the site, as well as helicopters and vehicles to search all the way to West Virginia for the missing barrels. She said that so far, they’ve seen no typical indicators of environmental impact: no fish killed or decrease in vegetation along the river.

That didn’t fly with community members during Thursday’s meeting. 

Kellie Ferguson, a mother of five and member of the group Citizens for Arsenal Accountability group, said questions posed to the panel during Thursday’s meeting about potential health and environmental hazards were left unanswered. She said the CAA group will meet later this week to debrief after finding out about the missing totes.

“They continually downplayed the situation,” she said. “Community members came to the meeting looking for answers and only left with more questions and confusion.”

The post Ammunition plant didn’t notify the public of toxic chemicals released into the New River for over a month, residents say appeared first on Cardinal News.

Plans to better conserve sage grouse on 65 million federal acres of the imperiled birds’ embattled habitat are being simultaneously cast by competing interest as either overly burdensome on western states, a script for extinction or a Goldilocksesque ideal level of protection. 

Drafts of the Bureau of Land Management’s divisive plans were met with cautious optimism early this year by Wyoming leaders and advocacy groups with a stake in sage grouse management. But that support evaporated last week when the BLM rolled out its final environmental impact statement outlining its revisions to the 9-year-old plans that guide sage grouse management today.

“The thing that changed — which changed the tenor of our comments — is that nothing changed,” said Bob Budd, who chairs Wyoming’s Sage Grouse Implementation Team. 

Budd and others in Wyoming had been optimistic because the state thought BLM was working “together on it” and that changes requested by state managers would be accommodated, he told WyoFile.

“We brought science to the table and said, ‘Look, here’s the way this ought to be handled,” Budd said. “It was ignored.” 

BLM’s final proposal amends 77 resource management plans across sage grouse habitat in 10 western states — revising policies on about 45% of the remaining sagebrush-studded landscapes where the chicken-sized birds dwell. The policies, according to the BLM, blend a “west-wide management approach with unique policies in the individual states.”

“Our environmental analysis, aided by a wealth of information from our partners, indicates that these proposed updates — which are the result of decades of sustained collaborative efforts — are the best way to ensure the health of these lands and local economies now and into the future,” BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning said in a statement. 

The revisions intend to reverse sagebrush habitat losses that are contributing to the long-term decline of sage grouse. Populations naturally swing up and down — Wyoming bird numbers are up, at least at the moment — but recent nadirs in the cycle hit all-time lows in most western states, according to the BLM’s final EIS. Rangewide, sage grouse populations declined nearly 80% from 1966 to 2021. There are few bright spots in the modern era: Since 2002, sage grouse have continued declining on 87% of their range.

Grouse groups trade takes

Some environmental groups say BLM’s final environmental impact statement doesn’t go far enough to stem the declines. Western Watersheds Project, American Bird Conservancy, the Center for Biological Diversity and Advocates for the West maintain the plans will exacerbate the sage grouse “extinction spiral.”  

“Letting anti-conservation states and extractive interests get their way above all else is something we expect to have to fight in the next administration, and it’s disappointing that this is what the Biden Administration is leaving us with as well,” Western Watersheds Project Deputy Director Greta Anderson said in a statement. “What a squandered opportunity.”

In 2019, Western Watersheds Project and a consortium of other groups successfully challenged BLM’s re-write of its West-wide sage grouse conservation strategy. That re-write was spurred by the energy dominance agenda of the first Trump administration. 

The plans being finalized now are intended to address the court’s concerns: that BLM’s 2019 revisions lacked a range of alternatives, did not take a hard look at environmental impacts, and improperly analyzed cumulative effects and required habitat replacement, known as compensatory mitigation.

Other conservation groups felt that the BLM mostly hit the mark in its 2024 revisions. 

A coalition including Audubon Rockies, The Nature Conservancy, National Wildlife Federation, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, Natural Resources Defense Council and Pew Charitable Trusts signaled they’re “optimistic” about the final plans. 

“With grouse populations on the precipice, now is the time for action,” Natural Resources Defense Council staffer Bobby McEnaney said in a statement. “By issuing these land management plans, the Bureau of Land Management has identified science-based approaches to manage the habitat that the iconic sage-grouse need for survival.”

Lee Davis of The Nature Conservancy’s Sagebrush Sea Program said in a statement that it’s “crucial” to implement a “balanced, pragmatic and durable” plan that “not only halts habitat loss but also averts the risk of an [Endangered Species Act] listing.”

“Without collaboration and compromise,” Davis said, “we all stand to lose.”

Wyoming gripes

In Wyoming’s comments submitted in response to the BLM’s draft plans in June, state officials sought adjustment to “10 areas” of the federal agency’s proposal. Gov. Mark Gordon, who signed the state’s letter, wrote that he would not support any designations of extra-protective “areas of critical environmental concern” for sage grouse in Wyoming. 

“One-fourth of our state is currently designated as ‘Core’ habitat for the species, and we have imposed significant restrictions on development, and dedicated hundreds of millions of dollars to habitat improvement in those areas at great economic cost,” the governor wrote at the time. “There is simply no need to add more designations, restrictions and possible confusion on those landscapes.” 

Gordon’s request was mostly not reflected in the final version. Five months later, BLM’s final plans included 636,352 acres of potential ACECs for sage grouse in Wyoming — down from 839,225 acres in the draft plans. 

The reduction by more than 200,000 acres came in an area known as the “Golden Triangle,” which the BLM described as a “large expanse of intact sagebrush that supports portions of the densest population of [sage grouse] across its entire range.” Even though it was slashed in size, the final plans still included a 272,557-acre ACEC in the Golden Triangle. 

Budd reiterated the belief that the extra layer of safeguards for sage grouse isn’t necessary. 

“The Golden Triangle is already in a core area, it’s in a migration corridor,” he said. “It has tons of protections already there.” 

Another big sticking point, he said, concerned how the BLM addressed “adaptive management.” 

“We have a process in Wyoming to deal with incidents, like the fires we recently had,” Budd said. “They came in with their version of how adaptive management would be done, down to the level of what metric or what model might be used.” 

The BLM is accepting protests of its final EIS through Dec. 9. Gordon and other western governors will also lead a “Consistency Review” process designed to ensure that the policies align with those of the states. That review won’t wrap up until Jan. 7 — two weeks before the change in presidential administrations.

“I am hopeful that as we move into a new Trump Administration that we can shape a functional Record of Decision in the New Year,” Gordon said in a statement. 

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The post Federal sage grouse plans panned by Wyoming and environmentalists, praised by others appeared first on WyoFile .

Vermonters turned out in record numbers to vote in this year’s general election, largely without a hitch, Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas said Tuesday at a formal event certifying the election results.

Out of 522,600 registered voters in the state, 372,885 cast their ballots in last week’s general election, Copeland Hanzas said. That’s nearly 2,000 more voters than the state saw in 2020 — a contest that shattered previous turnout records.

However, voter registrations are higher this year, resulting in a lower turnout rate for eligible voters than in 2020. This year, Vermont’s turnout rate was 71%, while in 2020 it was 73%.

“I am as pleased with the technical administration of this election as I could possibly be, but I’m even prouder of the participation levels,” Copeland Hanzas said. “This is what participatory democracy should look like.”

That was despite concerns the state’s election administration office had this year as it took note of threats and violence against voting processes in other states, and saw a noticeable rise in confrontational language against Vermont’s town clerks and election staffers.

“After hearing a smatter of vitriolic anecdotes in the weeks leading up to the election — from clerks, from election workers — Election Day, itself, went largely smoothly and respectfully,” Seán Sheehan, the office’s director of elections and campaign finance, said Tuesday.

Sheehan went on to say that, “fortunately,” Vermont did not see attacks on ballot drop boxes or bomb threats, both of which occurred in other states this year. But leading up to last Tuesday, he said local election officials reported that people had entered their offices “screamed, in some cases” about “voting by mail or other things they didn’t like about the election, or some of the disinformation that had been spread around the country.”

Asked if any offices received threats of physical violence, Sheehan said some communications were “borderline,” and the Secretary of State’s Office was in “close communication” with the Vermont State Police and FBI leading up to last week. The office also provided town clerks and election workers with de-escalation training.

But on Election Day itself, Sheehan recounted, “We didn’t hear many incidents at all. We really heard overwhelmingly that people were respectful. So we were very thankful to Vermonters for that.”

One week later, Copeland Hanzas and representatives of the state’s three major parties — Democrats, Republicans and Progressives — certified Vermont’s statewide election results. When they gathered in the Vermont House chamber to conduct the formality, security at the Statehouse was increased, including the use of a metal detector at the building’s entrance.

Among the races certified Tuesday was that for lieutenant governor, which saw Republican challenger John Rodgers outpacing Progressive Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman. 

According to Tuesday’s canvassing report, Zuckerman received 165,876 votes to Rodgers’ 171,854 — a difference of just 5,978. But with neither candidate having secured more than 50% of the vote (Zuckerman received 44.5% to Rodgers’ 46.1%), the Vermont Constitution requires the Legislature to cast a final vote in January. 

Zuckerman conceded the race last week but dangled the possibility that the Legislature could override voters — though leaders of the Democratic and Progressive parties threw cold water on the idea. 

The certification of the lieutenant governor’s race, signed by Copeland Hanzas and the party chairs on Tuesday, made note that the Legislature would have the final word.

To Vermont Progressive Party Chair Josh Wronski, the outcome of that race highlighted why the party has long supported ranked-choice voting.

“We shouldn’t be punting decisions to the Legislature when you don’t have a majority support for any candidate,” Wronski told reporters after the canvassing process was complete. “We should just, through our ballot, get to a majority support through a ranked-choice voting process.”

Had ranked-choice voting been in place, Wronski hypothesized that Zuckerman would have clinched the election. He pointed to the 13,671 votes cast for Green Mountain Peace & Justice Party nominee Ian Diamondstone and said, “I can’t imagine that most of those folks would be voting for the Republican as their number two.”

But, Wronski clarified, “we have no way of knowing” whether that would be the case, and he said the Legislature should respect the popular vote and certify the election for Rodgers.

One down-ballot election mix-up, meanwhile, may still spur a revote in Bennington County. Late last week, the Secretary of State’s Office flagged a voter checklist error in the town of Pownal, which placed roughly 40 voters in the incorrect legislative district.

For the Bennington-1 House race, the results were close enough that those 40 or so voters who were incorrectly assigned to the Bennington-5 district could have made the difference: Democrat John Cooper prevailed over Republican Bruce Busa by just 25 votes.

“There were no other elections on either of those ballots that would have been close enough that those voters being placed in the wrong district could have made a difference,” Copeland Hanzas told reporters Tuesday.

Copeland Hanzas said she expected a challenge to the election outcome to be filed, and she said her office would recommend to the court that the court order a revote to be conducted by universal mail-in ballot.

Read the story on VTDigger here: A record number of Vermont voters cast ballots in last week’s election.

At $273 million and counting, Montana’s just-ended 2024 U.S. Senate race is the state’s most expensive political race ever, and likely its last big-dollar federal election for the foreseeable future.

Federal election data shows that when once competitive “purple states” swing definitively to one political party, election investment by national party committees and political action committees flatlines. Montana has not elected a Democrat to statewide or federal office since Tester was elected to his third term in 2018. 

The U.S. Senate race between Republican Tim Sheehy, who Montanans elected Nov. 5, and three-term Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester cost at least $273.3 million in spending by the candidates and independent PAC expenditures on the race. 

Tester’s spending by late October totaled $81.8 million, by far the most ever by a federal candidate committee in Montana. Sheehy’s spending amounted to $22.2 million. Millions of dollars in candidate spending won’t be added to the ledger until early next year. 

“The parties direct donors to the competitive races, and outside groups target the seats/states that are the most competitive on paper, generally,” explained Kyle Kondik, of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. The center publishes Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a free weekly newsletter analyzing American politics. “Montana’s Senate seats no longer qualify — they are both held by Republicans and Montana has become a reliably Republican state at both the federal and statewide levels.”

Kondik said there may be times in the future when the state’s western U.S. House district could be competitive in a good year for Democrats. But the big-money Senate races are likely over for some time.

Federal election data shows how quickly outside congressional race money dries up for parties out of power. This year’s U.S. Senate race in North Dakota between Republican U.S. Sen. Kevin Cramer and Democrat Katrina Christiansen drew no serious PAC support for Christiansen after PACs and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spent $10 million on Democrat Heidi Heitkamp’s unsuccessful reelection bid in 2018. 

Cramer flipped the seat in 2018 by defeating Heitkamp. Thirty-three political committees spent money in the race.

This time out, the DSCC spent nothing on Christiansen. One PAC, Givegreen United Action, spent $6.66.

PAC funding ran to $126 million in Missouri in 2018. Claire McCaskill, part of the freshman class including Tester that flipped the Senate blue in 2006, was defending a Senate seat against Republican challenger Josh Hawley. Hawley defeated McCaskill in 2018, and easily won reelection last week as Democratic PACs and the party’s senatorial committee mostly stayed away. One PAC spent $379,165 opposing Hawley. No committee spent money supporting Democrat Lucas Kunce, who received 41.8% of the vote.

Republican Party committees and PACs also don’t stick around for races considered noncompetitive. In Rhode Island and Virginia, where Democrats flipped Senate seats in 2006 and continue to hold both, outside spending for Republicans has dried up. 

In Montana, “I think the western congressional district, the 1st congressional district, has the best chance going forward … where there might be outside money,” said Jeremy Johnson, head of the political science department at Carroll College in Helena. “But in the statewide races, Montana is not going to get that outside money unless the national Democratic Party sees proof that the Democratic candidate can compete.

“I think it’s going to have to be very grassroots-oriented, going back to the old ways of campaigning and to try to convince voters, that is literally meeting voters, community-based, and having to work on the street, because you’re not going to get the big money any more.”

The lack of funding for federal campaigns is something Montana Democrats have already dealt with, said Robyn Driscoll, who chairs the Montana Democratic Party. In 2022, without a Senate race on the ballot, there weren’t resources to get out the vote like there were this year, when registering new voters and door-to-door canvassing amounted to a multimillion-dollar effort, as revealed in federal campaign finance reports for Tester and supporting PACs.

As previously reported by Montana Free Press, Native American turnout in Montana in 2022 slumped to a 20-year low without Democrats driving turnout for a statewide candidate. Glacier County, where the Blackfeet Reservation is located, turned out just 26% of its vote in the 2022 general election. This year, with more than $1 million spent turning out the Indigenous vote statewide, Glacier County’s turnout was 61.3%, state data shows. 

Democrats are focusing more on local candidates, Driscoll said. The party has a “blue bench” coordinator to work with local government candidates. Local races have received more attention for about the past six years. The party’s executive director, Sheila Hogan, has been traveling to rural towns. It isn’t clear what’s been gained, but that’s the hard work, Driscoll said. 

“I haven’t really looked at the pickups, but it’s still laying the groundwork,” Driscoll said. “And, if the party in the future keeps it up, and keeps visiting these areas, that lays the groundwork. You’ve got to go where it’s hard. You don’t get to just sit in your bubble where you know you will have support in these safe areas.” 

U.S. Senate races have defined the political power struggle in Montana for the last 24 years, starting with the 2000 race between then U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns and Democrat Brian Schweitzer. Burns won, but Schweitzer, a newcomer, picked up 47.2% of the vote, suggesting that maybe Burns, despite having six years earlier become Montana’s first Republican to win a second Senate term, was vulnerable. 

Schweitzer snapped Republicans’ 16-year hold on the governor’s office in 2004, while Burns lost to Tester in a nail-biter, 48% to 49%, with Libertarian Stan Jones making up the difference. Thirty-nine political action committees spent money in that Senate race, more than Montana had previously experienced. The PACs favored Tester. The $19 million spent on the election was a Montana record. 

Democrats were surging, in part because they were appealing to voters in rural areas, where even their losses weren’t blowouts, as they are now. Schweitzer won 49 of Montana’s 56 counties and was reelected in 2008, Barack Obama campaigned in Montana, winning 47.3% of the vote, the largest share for a Democratic presidential candidate since Michael Dukakis in 1988. Republicans failed to produce viable candidates for U.S. Senate and governor.

Up for reelection in 2012, Tester drew a challenge from Denny Rehberg, who had a decade of comfortable wins behind him as Montana’s at-large U.S. representative. Tester won 49% of the vote to Rehberg’s 45%. Spending on that race ratcheted up to $48 million. The Supreme Court had ruled two years earlier in Citizens United that campaign spending constitutes free speech and can’t be legally limited. Super PACs funded by corporate donors spent  millions. The next time out, in 2018, expenditures hit $69.3 million. Tester won 50.3% of the vote, the high-water vote share among his Senate elections and the last time Democrats won a statewide election in Montana. 

The post Montana Democrats face an underfunded future appeared first on Montana Free Press.

Forge Battery, owners of projected plant in Wake County, remain optimistic about prospects of clean energy economy despite political change.

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A new initiative from the University of Vermont hopes to address the shortage of mental health professionals available to support the state’s youth.

Known as the Catamount Counseling Collaborative for Rural Schools, the program plans to train and place 52 school counselors, social workers and mental health clinicians in rural schools throughout Vermont for the next five years.

Recent surveys from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have found rising levels of depression and anxiety among Vermont middle and high school students. 

Despite this, Vermont lacks an adequate number of mental health professionals. In 2023, the state’s Workforce Development Board estimated a need for 230 more providers to meet growing demand. 

The new Catamount Counseling Collaborative for Rural Schools aims to address the gap. 

Through the program — funded by a $3.8 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education — University of Vermont graduate students are expected to contribute at least 25,000 clinical hours annually to support rural communities.

“Vermont mental health needs are pervasive and complex and they’re currently underserved and this is a way to reach them,” said Anna Elliott, associate professor of counseling.

Elliott, the principal investigator for the grant, has experience running a similar initiative in Montana, where she spent five years developing a program to support rural communities with mental health professionals. 

A key part of the program, Elliot said, is to encourage graduates to continue working in rural schools or mental health facilities after completing their training. She said she tailored the program to Vermont’s unique needs. This included analyzing various statistics from community needs assessments on issues such as suicide rates, substance use disorder and the stigma associated with seeking mental health services, ensuring the program aligns closely with the landscape of Vermont’s mental health needs.

“One of our primary goals in setting up the training program was attending to students’ reports that they often didn’t feel prepared to go and work in a rural environment,” she said. “Having an intensive and intentional training program that sets them up to really understand what they’re walking into and how to be prepared and how to ask for support incentivized students to stay, so we’re hoping to replicate that here.”

The program offers a stipend to those who remain in their assigned schools for at least one year, helping to ease potential barriers like securing a full-time job or finding affordable housing.

In Montana, Elliott said she noticed some graduate students couldn’t stay in rural schools due to limited funding for permanent positions. Other challenges, including housing and job security, also made it difficult for them to remain in these high-need areas.

“I’m taking the model that I did in Montana and integrating that in with the community schools model to not just say, ‘here’s a couple graduate students that will be here for a year’ but let’s actually take a systemic look at what’s happening in the school — what are the needs, resources, barriers and strength,” Elliott said.

To address these challenges, the program focuses on recruiting graduate students who already come from rural areas. By offering low-residency options, the program allows these students to complete much of their coursework remotely. This means they can stay at home rather than moving to campus, making it easier for them to balance their studies with their existing commitments.

“This grant provides significant opportunity to bring students into the helping professions who might not otherwise have access to this kind of specialized training,” said Danielle Jatlow, a co-principal investigator and social worker who coordinates UVM’s bachelor’s of social work program, in a press release from the university.

UVM faculty, including program co-leaders Robin Hausheer and Lance Smith, both associate professors of counseling, are starting outreach to rural schools. They hope to place graduate students in schools as early as this semester, according to the release.

“There are people and kids that are getting served this year that might not have been otherwise,” Elliott said in the release. “So that feels like everything.” 

Read the story on VTDigger here: New UVM program brings mental health professionals to Vermont’s rural schools.