Nearly two years after McAlester Regional Health Center declined to renew its lease with a previous cancer treatment provider, a newly renovated center operated by the state’s largest oncology practice is set to begin seeing patients Dec. 15. Quelling community concerns over whether full oncology services would actually return to one of southeast Oklahoma’s largest […]

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More than 300,000 Oklahomans rely on the Affordable Care Act Marketplace for health insurance, and the vast majority of them receive advanced premium tax credits, according to KFF.

Oklahoma Policy Institute researchers say nearly everyone buying insurance through the marketplace will be affected if enhanced tax credits are not extended. Kati Malicoate, who works in communications with the institution, said the state’s rural residents will be hardest hit.

“In certain areas, for example, Texas County, they could see increases of up to $1,000 per month, and over 100,000 rural Oklahomans use the marketplace, which makes this a huge issue,” Malicoate said.

Malicoate said there are existing health access disparities in rural areas, making it harder for people to get care, and the higher cost adds another layer.

There’s less access to transportation, reliable internet and fewer insurance providers. She said many of the state’s rural hospitals are at risk of closing, and uncompensated care costs make things worse.

“So as people lose their health insurance, whether from the enhanced premium tax credits expiring or the recent cuts to Medicaid and work requirements, we are going to see hospitals have people come in who cannot pay their bills,” Malicoate said. “They have to absorb those costs.”

She said this would also affect people outside the marketplace because it could lead to higher prices across the board, and some rural hospitals could close. For marketplace enrollees, Malicoate said to prepare and there are tools to help estimate premiums without the enhanced premium tax credits.

The U.S. Senate is expected to vote on a proposal to extend the tax credits, but NPR reports it might not have enough votes to advance.

“So even if someone thinks, ‘Well, I’m not on the marketplace, it’s not going to affect me,’ it’s absolutely going to trickle down,” Malicoate said. “I also think people need to keep in mind that this is not hopeless, and that you are able to contact your lawmaker and urge them to vote yes on this.”

For the first time, Ada is building a day center where people who are homeless have a place to hang out and to get resources, a reflection of a trend in rural Oklahoma of more people having a harder time staying in stable housing. 

Sarah Frye, director of Ada Homeless Services, views the center as a positive move by directly addressing a community problem rather than being in denial. It provides a safe shelter for vulnerable people and gives the nonprofit a central place for outreach. 

A bonus will be getting more accurate data on how many people are homeless in the city of about 16,500 residents. 

“We have a set amount of money for our homeless prevention programs and are seeing more applicants seeking more assistance each year,” Frye said. “Without a doubt in the last 12 months, we have seen more new people facing homelessness and new people falling into homelessness. 

“The problems are the same for urban and rural homeless people,” she said. “The difference is a lack of resources in rural areas. We’re hoping the day center will be the answer to failed street outreach. It’s hard doing street outreach. A tent may pop up but is gone by the time we can get there.”

Data about the depth of homelessness in rural areas is such a challenge that an accurate number doesn’t exist, according to frontline homeless outreach workers in rural Oklahoma. 

The federally mandated Point-In-Time Count from the U.S. Housing and Urban Development is a single-day count of homeless people held during the last two weeks in January. The first PIT report was produced in 2007 and involves asking a series of questions about demographics, health status and housing history.

In metropolitan areas, an army of volunteers is trained to do the census with partner nonprofits such as shelters, food pantries, meal centers and other outreach locations. Urban city officials use the PIT in public policy decision-making. 

That’s not the case in rural Oklahoma. 

To get the count, HUD divides the country into Continuums of Care based on population. The nation’s largest cities may have several Continuums of Care, while some rural areas span multiple counties. Ada is part of the Southeast Continuum of Care with 21 counties, totalling about 17,730 square miles that includes the dense forest of the Ouachita Mountains. 

By comparison, the Oklahoma City PIT covers just its city limits (621 square miles), and the Tulsa PIT includes the county of about 587 square miles. 

The 2025 PIT for the Southeast Continuum of Care shows 372 unsheltered people (24 of those younger than 18) and 329 in emergency shelter (89 of those younger than 18). 

“The Point-In-Time Count is completely inaccurate for rural areas,” Frye said. “It’s a lot harder to count 21 counties than a single city that can put out coffee and doughnuts to get a count. You could take the rural numbers, multiply by 10 and still not even be close to right. There are some counties that probably don’t get counted at all.

“With this being in January, during winter, homeless people disappear around here,” she said. “They tend to have a friend or family that lets them stay during the cold months. By the HUD definition, they aren’t homeless, but we know that they are.”

The HUD definition of unsheltered homelessness is sleeping overnight in a place not intended for human habitation, such as cars, tents, parks and streets. Sheltered homelessness is defined as adequate nighttime residence but supervised as public or private shelters, which could be emergency shelters or transitional living programs. 

Those definitions mean people who are couch surfing with friends and family or staying temporarily in motels are not considered homeless. Some towns have anti-homeless ordinances that make it illegal to sleep in public spaces. If those areas have no shelters, then people who are homeless tend to hide, making it difficult for a PIT census. 

The PIT results are reported to HUD, which considers that as part of a formula determining overall grant funding. This algorithm makes it difficult to know if, or how many, dollars are lost based on an undercount. Most rural housing and homeless advocates say other factors such as poverty rates hold greater weight, but it’s unclear, says Amanda Ewing, executive director of the Oklahoma Association of Community Action Agencies. 

“The Point-In-Time count is really more geared for urban and suburban areas and not well suited for Oklahoma,” Ewing said. 

Smaller populations mean fewer ranks of volunteers. Frye said she pulled in game wardens to let her know on the PIT day if they see any homeless people. Mostly, the census is based on volunteers and staff of agencies responsible for the count. 

The Northeast Oklahoma Continuum of Care has 11 counties covering about 6,840 square miles, including the Ozark mountains. Some cities, such as Vinita and Tahlequah, have concerted efforts, while counties such as Delaware are difficult to cover, said Lindi Conover, planner with the Northeast Oklahoma Community Action Agency, who is in charge of the count. On a strong year, she will have 70 volunteers, but it usually hovers closer to 45. 

The PIT from this year showed 128 unsheltered people and 65 sheltered individuals.

“Most people hear that and say, ‘That’s impossible, that’s wrong, I can find more people than that right now,’” Conover said. “Our area is vast. We don’t have the resources, the organization or the volunteers to do this sort of thing. Homelessness is not visible in rural areas. We don’t have encampments like in cities or shelters where people gather. If people are in tents, it’s way off the beaten path where they can’t be found.”

Conover said the undercount hurts on grants specifically relying on PIT to gauge need, but she is more concerned about a recent HUD announcement that would limit spending on permanent supportive housing programs to only 30% of its allocations to agencies. There has previously not been any restriction. 

Permanent supportive housing programs offer indefinite rental assistance and supportive services for people with disabilities who are also homeless. 

“There are partner groups that use 100% of the allocation for permanent supportive housing because we know that’s what helps people here the most,” Conover said. 

Another consequence of inaccurate PIT leads to a lack of community awareness. 

In Atoka, City Councilor Erica Pogue, who is also the director of the Inca Community Action Agency, says it’s difficult to advocate for public resources for homelessness without facts to show the problem. 

“Too many people don’t think there are homeless people here,” Pogue said. “I’ve practically taken them to where homeless people live. We’ve turned a blind eye to our homeless in rural places. I’m not sure how many there are, but it’s too many. We do not have shelters to get a count. It’s hard to convince people about homeless issues when they can’t see it.”

Atoka is also in the Southeast Continuum of Care, and Pogue’s agency leads the PIT effort for Atoka County and three other counties. 

“The bigger issue we have is not having housing to get people into.”

Erica Pogue

“We will have people looking for homeless people, but you’re not going to find them in the daytime,” Pogue said. “We use staff to drive around and mark down what they see, but that’s not an efficient way to do this. You really need to go to where they are, but we’re not going to ask staff to go into some areas because it’s dangerous.”

In 2017, the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty released a report detailing flaws in the PIT method that mirror challenges faced by rural frontline workers. It recommended expanding the definition of homelessness and moving to a design that allows for follow-up surveys, estimations and other ways to input information. 

“The results of the PIT counts – and even the trend data – are not necessarily accurate indicators of the success or failure of programs or policies that address homelessness,” the report states. 

Pogue has been pushing for public investments into transitional housing programs because her agency’s hotel rental assistance program isn’t able to keep up with demand. It costs $1,000 to $1,500 to rent a three-bedroom home in Atoka, which isn’t affordable on a $10- to $15-an-hour wage, she said. That’s pushing more people into weekly rate hotels. 

“We spend money putting people in hotels, and if we had a shelter or transitional housing, it would be more effective and help a greater quantity of people,” Pogue said. “What we are currently doing works for our program, but transitional housing would provide long-term assistance and be better for the people to establish their lives sufficiently.

“Whether we get a better Point-in-Time count or not isn’t the pressing problem,” she said. “The bigger issue we have is not having housing to get people into. With the housing, there are too many restrictions, such as felony convictions, and not enough to go around for all who need it.”

The post Counting the Invisible: Why Rural Homelessness Stays Hidden appeared first on Oklahoma Watch.

The report analyzed the most recent statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It notes that the violence discussed in their findings is the direct result of colonization and structural racism.

Among the most striking parallels between national and state data are the high gun suicide rates among Indigenous folks. Out of all 50 states, Oklahoma had the second-highest gun suicide rate among Indigenous people in 2023. Alaska was listed as number one, according to a Johns Hopkins report on gun violence.

Nationally, the Indigenous population has the second-highest suicide rates and firearm suicide rates, with Indigenous men particularly impacted. While those suicide rates remain high, they have lowered in recent years.

“The American Indian/Alaska Native population faces a continuing crisis of lethal gun violence that outside of impacted communities rarely receives the attention it demands,” Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center, said in a news release. “The goal of this annual report is to support the efforts of advocates, organizations, and policymakers as they work to reduce gun violence in this community.”

Public health recommendations from Johns Hopkins to help prevent firearm suicide include safely securing firearms away from those who may be at risk of self-harm and meeting with clinicians to develop healthy coping mechanisms during crisis events.

The report acknowledges the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples crisis, and the information utilized is most likely undercounted due to the high rates of Indigenous women impacted, as well as data misclassifications. The VPC findings showed that “since 2015, the rate of female AI/AN victims killed by males has been the second highest in the nation.”

The homicide rate caused by firearms for American Indians and Alaska Natives continues to increase across the country. The study acknowledges the need for ongoing work to address violence.

Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. announced the land acquisition last week, holding a pen and signed document in his hand.

“This is one of the most important documents I have signed as your principal chief,” he said in a video posted to X. “… This document represents something that is long overdue, which is the return of that cemetery to the Cherokee people.”

The editor of the first Cherokee newspaper and historical leader, Elias Boudinot, is buried there, along with Sam Worcester, who defended Cherokee sovereignty in the landmark Supreme Court ruling of Worcester v. Georgia.

The cemetery is located in Tahlequah, near the capital of the Cherokee Nation.

“A lot of Cherokees who survived the Trail of Tears and helped build up the Cherokee Nation and our new homeland are laid to rest there,” Hoskin Jr. said.

Hoskin Jr. said restoring and making historic Cherokee cemeteries more accessible is a top priority for the nation, especially this one.

The Department of the Interior is set to take a bigger role in tribal education, and some lawmakers say the dismantling of the Department of Education could spell problems for tribal programs caught in the reshuffling.

The Interior Department will soon oversee 14 projects and funding related to tribal education previously housed in the Department of Education. The delegation to a new agency is part of the Trump administration’s first major steps toward dismantling the Department of Education and meeting its stated goal of returning power to the states.

While the Education Department will still play a role in overseeing the Office of Indian Education and other tribal-related programs and funding, lawmakers say they are worried that the changes could mean that tribal education would eventually fall completely off the table as a priority.

“I think that the federal government has failed in so many ways to live up to its trust and treaty responsibilities when it comes to tribal nations, including with education,” said Democratic Sen. Tina Smith, a member of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. “To transfer Indian education programs out of the Department of Education gives me no reason to think that they’re going to do anything to protect those programs.”

The shift to the Department of the Interior was one of several partnerships the administration announced between the Department of Education and other agencies last week.

Interior already houses the Bureau of Indian Education, which is a school system that serves 40,000 students across 183 schools on reservations and another 325,000 students through its programming, according to the agency’s website. While Interior directly funds schools and students, the role of the Department of Education has long been to create education policies and provide federal funds to support Native education.

Sen. Ben Ray Luján did not comment specifically on moving these tribal education programs to Interior, but he pointed to broader concerns about how the administration has facilitated programs intended for Native American communities and concerns about the future of the Department of Education.

“They don’t believe in [education]. They’re gonna try to dismantle it. And now they’re proposing to send programs to Secretary Kennedy, who has been horrible on health care when it comes to [Indian Health Service], and eliminating positions and access to health care across Native American communities,” Luján said.

(The Department of Health and Human Services, which is overseen by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is currently set to oversee some of the Department of Education’s programs, but not the ones related to tribal education.)

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, chair of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee and a lawmaker whose home state of Alaska includes hundreds of federally recognized tribes, referred questions to a previous statement, in which she was more broadly critical of the decision to splinter the Department of Education.

“The administration’s decision to transfer these congressionally mandated responsibilities and programs to other agencies that lack the necessary policy expertise may have lasting negative impacts on our young people,” Murkowski wrote in a statement last week. “And simply moving the administration of these programs to other agencies will not return control of education to the states.”

Some lawmakers see the Department of the Interior as a reasonable choice because it already handles many tribal education programs, but the process of actually shuffling the programs leaves questions.

“The Department of the Interior remains committed to strengthening educational opportunities for native students and honoring our trust responsibilities. We are excited about this opportunity to better serve Native youth,” a spokesperson for Interior said in a statement when asked about lawmakers’ concerns that tribal education could be compromised by the partnership.

Other Republicans, including those whose constituencies include large populations of Native Americans, welcomed the news.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin, who is Cherokee and represents 37 federally recognized tribes in Oklahoma, saw the move as logical.

“I’m supporting that. I think it aligns,” Mullin said. With regard to tribal programs, he added: “I mean, Interior’s over everything else.”

Sen. Mike Rounds, who introduced a Returning Education to Our States Act that would transfer the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to the Department of Health and Human Services and the Office for Civil Rights to the Department of Justice, said he was excited about the moves.

“I’m very happy with it,” Rounds said about the agency agreements. “This is a step in the right direction.”

Even before the moves were announced, some lawmakers were concerned about what might happen in tribal education under the new administration.

“Children on reservations weren’t getting an appropriate education, and because of federal intervention, now they do to a large extent,” said Rep. Bobby Scott, ranking member of the House Committee on Education and Workforce, before the announcement was made. “And you have to keep enforcing it. So you remove the enforcement, you regress back to what you were used to doing.”

This story was produced as part of a partnership between NOTUS and Oklahoma Watch.

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Agriculture credit conditions in states more reliant on crops have steadily weakened as summer turned to fall, but the beef industry is telling a different story.

Despite a tightening ag economy, the finances in areas more dependent on cattle generally remained stable, and lenders in those areas reported higher incomes and steady loan quality in the Kansas City Federal Reserve’s Agricultural Credit Survey.

The survey is a report to help take the temperature of the ag economy. It includes Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and mountain states such as Colorado, northern New Mexico and Wyoming.

“Weakness in the crop sector continued to weigh on the outlook for the U.S. farm economy despite a boost to incomes in some regions from strength in the livestock sector and recent increases in corn and soybean prices,” according to the survey.

With reduced working capital and higher production costs, the survey shows greater demand for financing, and farm debt growth is staying strong among ag lenders. The distribution of assistance from the American Relief Act, which producers had eagerly awaited earlier this year, provided modest support, according to the report.

Economists note somewhat weak crop prices have hit farm incomes. Economists note that although Oklahoma’s farm income was low compared to its northern neighbors in recent years, the state is now seeing a higher income than one year ago, while crop-heavy states are seeing a dip.

For the beef industry, it’s a tale of supply and demand – and a series of rough droughts shrinking overall cattle numbers.

Beef prices are at a record-high because the nation’s cattle herd is the smallest it’s been in decades and demand for beef at the grocery store remains strong, causing supplies to tighten as producers sell more cattle.

Producers say they still face challenges like inflation and high input costs, but they are seeing profits for the first time in years.

Although Oklahoma is more dependent on beef revenue, there are plenty of producers growing crops as well. And crops are weathering something different.

Tariff tensions and rising input costs have left producers feeling squeezed. Purdue University’s Ag Economy Barometer shows poor profit margins have left crop producers with a more pessimistic view of the situation on their operations.

Farmers expect weaker financial performance than a year ago, according to the barometer.

The Muscogee Nation is sounding the alarm over the need to revitalize two Indigenous languages. Principal Chief David Hill recently issued an executive order outlining actions to safeguard the Muscogee and Euchee languages.

The Muscogee Nation lost about 200 fluent speakers and knowledge keepers during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Hill.

“And that’s one of the things my grandmother told me is, ‘Once you lose the language, your culture and your history,’ she said, ‘you no longer exist,’” Hill said.

A 2024 study estimated fewer than 300 first-language Muscogee speakers remain, most of whom are over 60 years old. Both the Muscogee and Euchee languages are critically endangered, as stated in the proclamation, and “hold deep spiritual and cultural significance, carrying knowledge, stories and traditions” that inform Muscogee identity.

Currently, the Muscogee Nation has a liaison department that organizes gatherings for fluent language speakers to preserve knowledge. But, Hill said, this executive order takes it a step further by establishing a language revitalization task force and securing funding to support early childhood language immersion programs.

It also aims to integrate the language into tribal operations and services by training employees to utilize Muscogee and Euchee greetings during in-person and over-the-phone interactions. The order also notes incentives for learning and using the languages in their daily work.

The proclamation is symbolic, too.

“I think it was the president had done one, saying ‘English is the number one language in the United States,’” Hill said. “Well, not to us. Our first language is Muscogee.”

Euchee, also spelled Yuchi, is a linguistic isolate, meaning it has no known genetic relationship to another language.

Dr. Richard Grounds, whose Yuchi name is shUpa, created the nation’s writing system about 30 years ago. Now he works as the executive director of the Yuchi Language Project, an organization currently revitalizing the language and working to create a sustainable language community through an immersion school and other community programs.

“Our languages are critical to our life in the churches, in our ceremonies, and everything that we do,” Grounds, who is a Muscogee citizen, said. “And to have this sitting principal chief of the Muscogee Creek Nation, just spell it out. …it’s absolutely critical to the forward progress of the nation and of our languages.”

During the allotment era, the Yuchi were listed as “Creek” on the Dawes Rolls — and have since insisted they are separate from the Muscogees. But they were denied federal recognition in 2000 and are the only one out of the 39 tribes in Oklahoma not to be federally recognized. There are more than 2,000 Yuchi people, and many are enrolled citizens of the Muscogee Nation, according to the Yuchi Language Project.

“We, at this point, are primarily working with second-language fluent learners,” Grounds said. “So we’re up around 50 folks who are at different levels of fluency.”

Grounds said about 30 students are enrolled in the Yuchi Language Immersion School near Tulsa, and there are approximately 25 students at the Kellyville Yuchi afterschool program.

“We’re teaching our kids to be able to literally say that ‘We are still here,’” Grounds said. “But to say it in our language, just as our founding elder was making those words in our language back to the Creator.”

Hill noted the importance of the Muscogee language and that he’s protective of it, especially now that it’s becoming more accessible.

Toward the end of the executive order is an action item to develop a law to safeguard the intellectual property of their languages — a move to ensure that what happened with the Standing Rock Sioux, when a white man copyrighted Lakota language materials after working with elders, does not happen to the Muscogee.

As appropriations for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program’s funding remains uncertain because of the government shutdown, Native American tribes across the U.S. have been forced to step in with emergency funds to support families who rely on the federal aid.

It’s a demographic that relies heavily on SNAP, which provides food assistance for approximately 42 million Americans. According to the Economic Policy Institute, 23% of American Indian and Alaska Native households used SNAP benefits in 2023 — nearly double the national average.

And tribal advocates and representatives have warned lawmakers of the risk the government shutdown poses to their communities, including the lapses in funding to SNAP, Head Start and WIC, the Department of Agriculture’s Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children.

“Most tribes are taking care of their tribal members. It’s just that they’re taking on a lot of expense at this point,” Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin said.

In Oklahoma, Cherokee Nation officials announced on Monday they would use $6.5 million to provide direct checks to citizens on the reservation or in nearby counties. Another $1.25 million will fund nonprofit food programs and local food banks to help support the Cherokee Nation, which is the largest tribe in the country.

The Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma launched a Temporary Food Assistance Program for tribal members nationwide. Eligible members can apply for a one-time $150 food assistance payment via EBT, and holiday food vouchers. 

The Osage Nation expanded its Temporary SNAP Relief Program to cover all enrolled Osage households statewide. Eligible households may apply for a one-time $300 payment per household. 

Other nations, such as the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes, Muscogee (Creek) Nation and the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, are coordinating food banks, resource lists and food-distribution tailgate events in anticipation of benefit disruption.

In other states, the percentage of people affected by SNAP cuts also disproportionately hits tribal nations. Wisconsin, for example, has 11 federally recognized tribes, and the Menominee tribe is its largest with approximately 8,700 members, according to Wisconsin First Nations. Wisconsin Watch reported that in Menominee County, which is 80% populated by the Menominee Tribe, 46% of residents receive SNAP benefits. Officials for the tribe did not respond to an inquiry.

When asked if he’d been speaking with tribal nations in his state about how they are affected by SNAP cuts, Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson said, “Well they would be affected like everyone else.”

“I’m opposed to this government shutdown,” Johnson said. “The simple solution is: Vote for the House CR.”

Sen. Mike Rounds told NOTUS he has been in contact with the tribal nations in South Dakota.

“The vast majority of the members on most of my reservations, one of their primary sources of money for food is SNAP,” Rounds said. “Our Democrat colleagues, I think, are starting to understand it. But they are wedging because they want something that we can’t deliver, which is an outcome on their proposal to simply continue on with a failed plan on Obamacare.”

A federal judge ordered President Donald Trump on Thursday to issue full SNAP benefits within a day, a decision that comes after a long back-and-forth over the use of USDA contingency funds. On Friday, the administration filed an appeal to stop that order.

But even ahead of the shutdown, SNAP was already facing cuts. Trump’s reconciliation bill slashed $186 million in SNAP funding through 2034, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest. The bill, which was signed into law in July, included a $500 million cut in funding to the USDA’s Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement program, which allowed states and tribes to procure fresh, locally-sourced food.

“I’ve been speaking to tribal leaders and those that are responsible for food programs within sovereign nations, and there’s concern across the board,” said Sen. Ben Ray Luján.

Luján’s state, New Mexico, has the third-highest percentage of Native Americans in the country. In his previous attempt to pass legislation that would temporarily fund SNAP, Luján included reimbursing the states and tribes that are currently using emergency funding.

When asked if tribes or states would receive these reimbursements, a spokesperson for the USDA blamed Democrats for the shutdown.

“This compromises not only SNAP, but farm programs, food inspection, animal and plant disease protection, rural development, and protecting federal lands,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “Senate Democrats are withholding services to the American people in exchange for healthcare for illegals, gender mutilation, and other unknown ‘leverage’ points.”

Historically, tribal reservations are geographically isolated and more likely to be in a food desert.

The only program that remains somewhat untouched by the government shutdown and the reconciliation bill is the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations. FDPIR provides monthly boxes of USDA foods that Natives refer to as “commodities” based on their lower nutritional value. Prior to Nov. 1, when SNAP ran out of federal funding because of the shutdown, some nations suggested their members switch from SNAP to FDPIR because households can not participate in both programs in the same month.

The consensus among lawmakers, however, is to end the shutdown.

Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz, the vice chair of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, told NOTUS on Wednesday the effect on Native American communities is simple to describe: “It’s quite bad, disproportionately bad.”

“People deserve to eat,” he said.

This story was produced as part of a partnership between NOTUS and Oklahoma Watch.

The post Native American Tribes Are Struggling in Wake of SNAP Uncertainty appeared first on Oklahoma Watch.

Savannah Phillips never thought suicide would be part of her family’s story. But it’s there, the last line in her father’s obituary, in a plea to others to call a helpline before it’s too late. 

As a young man, Charles Rust attended high school in Broken Bow and ran track and field in college. As an adult, he struggled with drugs and alcohol, Phillips said, and some of his life choices left him in a lonely place.

Two years ago, in a parking lot in Antlers, Rust shot himself with a 9mm handgun and died. He was 70. 

“Whatever drove him to that decision just wasn’t true,” Phillips said. “Lots of people loved him. We all make mistakes. We all need Jesus.”

Phillips’ willingness to talk about her father’s suicide helps shed light on a troubling trend: more older Americans are dying by gun suicide. The rate is particularly high in Oklahoma, and especially in rural counties. Pushmataha County, where Rust lived, had a rate of gun suicide deaths among older adults higher than in any U.S. state, according to an analysis of detailed mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2009 to 2023 by The Trace and GQ. 

Their reporting found Americans 70 and over had the highest suicide rates of any age group, and their rates of suicide have increased in recent years. During this period, 63,836 older Americans died by gun suicide.

Gun suicide is a greater killer of men over 70 than car crashes, the analysis showed. Older white men die by gun suicide at the highest rate — a rate more than triple that of Black and Latino men of the same age, and 19 times the rate of women 70 and over.

Oklahoma had the 10th-highest rate among U.S. states at 18.6 per 100,000 residents aged 70 and older (an explanation of The Trace’s methodology can be found online). 

Oklahoma also has one of the highest overall gun suicide rates, at 13.6 per 100,000 residents in 2023, the fifth highest among U.S. states, according to Violence Policy Center data from 2023, the latest available. 

No single factor drives the high rates of suicide later in life, The Trace found. Severe illness, pain, financial pressures, isolation, a lack of mental health care, cognitive impairment and the availability of firearms all played a role. 

Autopsy and law enforcement reports of older, Oklahoma men who died by suicide sometimes cite terminal illnesses, such as cancer. 

Zack Stoycoff, executive director of the Healthy Minds Policy Initiative, said among men, there’s more of a stigma around seeking help. It’s important, he said, to screen for mental health issues during physical health services because many of these men are visiting the doctor regularly or receiving treatment for a physical condition.   

“We can do a lot better in addressing mental health in primary care settings,” Stoycoff said.

In rural counties, especially, there are fewer services and longer wait times. One mental health provider in Pushmataha County, Bailey Armstrong, said communities need to invest more in resources like transportation, drug treatment and education. 

“Nobody talks about it,” Armstrong said. “There’s a huge, huge stigma around suicide and it’s almost like people locally think if you say the word suicide, you’re asking for it to happen.”

With additional reporting by Aaron Mendelson of The Trace.

The post Isolation, Illness and Guns: Why More Older Oklahomans Are Dying by Suicide appeared first on Oklahoma Watch.