Gigabit Hollers'
LOUISVILLE, Ky.- In Kentucky 4 in 10 adults report excellent or very good health (43%) and about 3 in 10 (26%) report good health. Those are among the findings in the latest Kentucky Health Issues Poll (KHIP) released by the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky and Cincinnati-based Interact for Health. Research has found a powerful link between people's self-report of their personal health status and the predicted length and quality of their lives. KHIP highlights include:
"Kentucky adults understand that more exercise and a healthier diet can help them get healthier," stated Susan Zepeda, President/CEO of the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky. "A majority say making a change to improve their health would be difficult or very difficult. While time, money and motivation were frequently named as barriers to making positive health changes, a few also acknowledged the role that the physical and policy environment can play in supporting healthier living. We can support better health for all Kentuckians by making changes in our built environment to make exercise easier, supporting access to fruits and vegetables, and continuing to offer all Kentuckians health insurance." Sponsored annually by Interact for Health and the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky, the Kentucky Health Issues Poll is a 1,600-household phone survey, polling Kentuckians for their views on key health policy issues likely to come before the legislature or local policymaking bodies. Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky is a non-profit philanthropic organization whose mission is to address the unmet health care needs of Kentuckians by developing and influencing health policy, improving access to care, reducing health risks and disparities, and promoting health equity. The complete report is here. |
Local Foods, Local Places(LFLP), an effort supporting communities that are building local food systems, was launched in 2014. We see an amazing range of innovative thinking generated when local leaders and citizens are supported in their work to strengthen communities. Top-down solutions do not always fit the realities in neighborhoods and on main streets. This Administration has embarked on a different, locally-driven approach to empower homegrown solutions.
Unfortunately, the neighborhood where a child grows up impacts her odds of graduating high school, her health and her lifetime economic opportunities.
The Administration has been steadily embarking on a different approach to working with communities to ensure a child’s zip code never determines her destiny. Over the past seven years, the Administration has worked to disrupt the outdated top-down approach and transform the federal government into a more effective partner for local government, non-profits, businesses and other stakeholders. How is this happening? First, federal experts are working hand in hand with residents and local leaders to create customized solutions. Second, federal agencies are better coordinated and improving the ways they interact with communities. Finally, people at all levels are using data more effectively to help inform solutions and evaluate what works and what doesn’t.
Recognizing that different regions have unique challenges and resources, the President has called upon the federal government to act creatively in order to become more responsive to the ideas and concerns of local leaders and citizens. Several agencies including the Department of Agriculture,Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Transportation, the Appalachian Regional Commission, the Delta Regional Authority, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, came together to launch LFLP and help communities increase economic opportunities for local farmers and related businesses, creating vibrant places and promoting childhood wellness by improving access to healthy local food.
Projects like those supported by LFLP collaborations help us learn how to better coordinate and target federal assistance as we work with communities. Put simply: People striving to make their neighborhood a great place to live, work and raise a family know their community's strengths and needs, and our job is to help advance their vision. Like the support for local entrepreneurs that is helping revitalizeMain Street in Corbin, Kentucky, cities are finding that connecting producers and other small businesses with local buyers does much more than complete a commercial transaction; it creates relationships that expand potential. It creates communities where people know and support each other. It lowers barriers and encourages, often unexpected, partnerships.
Healthy food and regular physical activity are also key to a long, productive life—but for some, access to vegetables, fruits and walkable areas is limited. For example, Delta communities have some of the richest farmland and most experienced farmers in the world, a real competitive advantage if communities can nurture business skills and innovative thinking in the agriculture sector. Building on the strengths of the community is the best way to help people develop sustainable strategies that feed their neighbors, create local jobs and cultivate a quality of life their children want to come home to after college. For example, a LFLP partner Clarksdale, Mississippi has established a vegetable farming-based job training program and a series of community gardens that will help supply food for a new farmers market and café.
Our LFLP partner Williamson, W.V. is buildingWilliamson Health Innovation Hub to capitalize on their own unique strengths: focusing on ways to leverage the local food system and a federally qualified health center to establish a culture of health by improving access to fresh, healthy foods, promoting an active lifestyle and providing greater access to health care services. Farmers in the area are exploring creating demonstration sites to test and share ideas on how to recycle former coal mines into viable farmland.
All of the26 round one LFLP communitiesare already making a difference in people’s lives in their own unique ways. Some are building support for small business development, aggregating demand or helping farmers to market local foods and products. Others are working to better integrate transportation infrastructure and walkability planning to connect people to markets and local restaurants. Health outcomes are also being targeted through school and community programs that teach children about nutrition, provide hands-on experience growing food, increase access through expanded use of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
We are looking forward to supporting the work of the27 LFLP community partners for 2016as they work to make a difference in their communities. The Administration’s focus on prioritizing locally-driven solutions has created a road map of tested program innovations and interventions that can continue to support every community working to improve the quality of life and provide opportunities to families in rural and tribal communities across the nation.
Doug O’Brien is the Senior Advisor for the White House Rural Council.
March 2, 2016 4:57 PM
Region has lost market share, thousands of jobs
Loss of high-paying jobs has hurt wider economy
Another coal boom considered ‘improbable’
Statistics in a new report underscore the sharp decline in coal that has undermined Eastern Kentucky’s economy.
Consider the figure 4 percent.
That was how much of the nation’s coal Eastern Kentucky produced in 2014. The problem: It was down from 13 percent in 1984, according to the article by policy analyst Matt Klesta at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, which was released Wednesday.
900 Number of coal jobs lost in Eastern Kentucky on average each year since 1979
Or 900.
That’s how many coal jobs the region lost on average each year since 1979, according to the report.
The downward slide has accelerated sharply since 2012, but that’s the painful tail-end of an overall decline in jobs that goes back decades.
Coal employment peaked in the state’s eastern coalfield in 1948 at more than 66,000 workers. It has since gone down 92 percent, interrupted only by a relatively brief, temporary uptick during the 1970s coal boom, the report said.
By the end of 2015, the number of coal jobs in Eastern Kentucky was estimated at 5,077 — down 29 percent from 2014.
That was the lowest level in more than a century, though the state still has an above-average share of coal jobs.
79 Percent drop in coal production in Eastern Kentucky in 2015 from the all-time peak in 1990
And finally, 79 percent.
That’s how much coal production dropped in Eastern Kentucky in 2015 from the all-time peak in 1990, according to the report.
Nearly half the counties identified in the report as producing coal in 1988 no longer do.
Eastern Kentucky is part of the area covered by the Cleveland Fed, which does research on a range of economic issues.
Klesta said he decided to look into the decline in coal in Eastern Kentucky and how the region was trying to diversify its economy because that could provide information and lessons for other places.
Cheap natural gas, efforts to reduce carbon emissions — including through tougher environmental regulations — and other factors also will put pressure on other coal-producing regions in the country, analysts have said.
But in the same period Eastern Kentucky’s share of national production dropped from 13 percent to 4 percent, Wyoming’s share jumped from 15 percent to 40 percent.
Booms and busts are inherent in natural-resource production, causing many to hope the next boom is imminent, the report said. However, international and domestic changes in energy production, policy and pricing “make the next boom increasingly improbable” for Eastern Kentucky, the report said.
The report notes how the loss of coal jobs hurts the region’s wider economy.
4 Percent of the nation’s coal produced in Eastern Kentucky in 2014; that is down from 13 percent in 1984
In 2014, the average coal miner made $72,809 a year, far more than the average income of $35,982 in Eastern Kentucky.
“The loss of thousands of high-paying mining jobs represents a significant decline in local spending power,” the report said.
While the rest of the state and nation recovered from the deep recession of 2008 and 2009, Eastern Kentucky didn’t, and it has been declining the past four years, the report said.
In addition to the lost jobs, the drop in production has slashed the amount of severance tax the state and counties get on mined coal.
The tax generated $298 million in the 2011-12 fiscal year but only $180 million in 2014-15, the report said, “straining city and county budgets that have become dependent on the tax revenue for maintaining services.”
The slump in coal comes on top of long-standing problems, such as high rates of poverty and drug abuse, the report said.
Klesta said the situation was not hopeless.
There are “a lot of good committed people in the region” working for solutions, he said, citing ongoing efforts to diversify and boost the economy.
Those include Shaping Our Appalachian Region, or SOAR; work by the Eastern Kentucky Concentrated Employment Program to retrain laid-off miners; ideas to use arts and culture for economic development; and a plan to spread high-speed Internet service through the region in hopes of spurring job creation.
“It’s going to be a collection of a lot of things” to revitalize the eastern coalfield, Klesta said.
The report was the first of several the Federal Reserve plans this year on Eastern Kentucky.
Bill Estep: 606-678-4655, @billestep1