TresSugar

Free Healthcare Comes to Appalachia on Wheels

LibertySugar — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 03:00:00 -0700

Each year the Remote Area Medical clinic provides free healthcare services to residents of Appalachia's coal mining counties, but people from as far as Indiana travel there for care. This region of the Eastern US is one of the nation's most impoverished, and this clinic-on-wheels wants to help the under- and uninsured.

Some of the 2,500 patients spend the night in their cars, hoping to see one of the 1,400 volunteer medical personnel. The free two-and-a-half day clinic is the largest of its kind in the US, and mostly provides vision and dental services.

The Remote Area Medical clinic sets up in Wise, VA. About 20 percent of Wise County's population are families living below the poverty level, making less than $21,200 per year. What more can be be done to provide regular care for the nation's disadvantaged so they don't have to wait overnight and sleep in their cars?

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Front Page: Missing Gov. Was in Argentina, Not Appalachia

TresSugar — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 08:01:33 -0700

South Carolina's Gov. Mark Sanford, who has been missing since last Thursday, has returned from Argentina. While his wife said she had no idea where he was, his staff said he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail, which appears to have been false. - New York Times
Dick Cheney has received a $2 million plus book deal for his memoirs. - Politico
Conan O'Brien paid tribute to the late Ed McMahon on last night's The Tonight Show. - NBC
A new study shows that teens and young adults who are overweight or obese are more likely to develop pancreatic cancer later in life. - Web MD
Joseph Brooks, the 71-year-old Oscar-winning composer who wrote "You Light Up My Life," has been charge with raping or sexually assaulting 11 different women. He allegedly used Craigslist to carry out his crimes. - New York Post

Expert: Worms and Parasites Can Perpetuate US Poverty

LibertySugar — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:00:53 -0700

Disease caused by worms and parasites, which negatively impact child development and contribute to heart disease, disproportionately infect America's poor.

Dr. Peter Hotez, who works for George Washington University and the Sabin Vaccine Institute, studied nine parasitic diseases affecting 10 million Americans. His research found that the diseases occur predominately in "people of color living in the Mississippi Delta and elsewhere in the American South, in disadvantaged areas, and in the US-Mexico borderlands, as well as in certain immigrant populations and disadvantaged white populations living in Appalachia."

Hotez concludes that like malaria did last century, these diseases could produce a generation of weak unproductive adults, furthering the cycle of poverty. In addition, climate change could lead to a wider spread of diseases like dengue fever, more common to the developing world.

What should the US do to decrease the health gap between rich and the poor? Should health considerations be treated like equality efforts in other areas, like education?

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