Appalachian Studies Commons^™

Experiencing Cancer In Appalachian Kentucky, Melanie Mccomsey, David Ahern, Robin C. Vanderpool, Timothy W. Mullett, Ming-Yuan Chih, Meghan Johnson, Michele Ellison, Karen Onyeije, Bradford W. Hesse, Eliah Aronoff-Spencer

Journal of Appalachian Health

Nothing tells the story of people working together better than a community quilt. A diversity of talents, colors, and materials brought together through skill and shared purpose. Perhaps never before have we as Americans needed a stronger reminder that many hands make short work of big problems. The work presented here by the L.A.U.N.C.H. Collaborative offers a new framework for health care that could be compared to a digital quilt, powered by community-based participatory design, with lived expertise and the newest advances in broadband-enabled connected health solutions. This work demonstrates the value and need to engage local communities and what …

Preface: Experiencing Cancer In Appalachian Kentucky, Michele Ellison, Robin C. Vanderpool

Journal of Appalachian Health

Connected cancer care is of increasing importance in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Linking & Amplifying User-Centered Networks through Connected Health (L.A.U.N.C.H.) Collaborative in Appalachian Kentucky has pioneered a new roadmap for equipping communities with the transformative power of broadband to innovate around the future of cancer care and to better scale their ideas. The roadmap involves reaching across disciplines, including public health, anthropology, telecommunications, and user-centered design. The goal is to leverage connectivity and cancer communication research and practice to make a real difference for patients and families.

Geographic Variation In The Structure Of Kentucky’S Population Health Systems: An Urban, Rural, And Appalachian Comparison, Rachel Hogg-Graham, Angela Carman, Glen P. Mays, Pierre Martin Dominique Zephyr

Journal of Appalachian Health

Introduction: Research examining geographic variation in the structure of population health systems is continuing to emerge, and most of the evidence that currently exists divides systems by urban and rural designation. Very little is understood about how being rural and Appalachian impacts population health system structure and strength.

Purpose: This study examines geographic differences in key characteristics of population health systems in urban, rural non-Appalachian, and rural Appalachian regions of Kentucky.

Methods: Data from a 2018 statewide survey of community networks was used to examine population health system characteristics. Descriptive statistics were generated to examine variation across geographic regions in …

Appalachian Regional Commission Recovery Ecosystem Background And Overview, Kostas Skordas, Andrew Howard

Journal of Appalachian Health

The Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) has long addressed issues of substance abuse through funded community-based interventions, research, and sponsored conferences. Recently, the opioid crisis created a new urgency for cross-sector collaboration among various partners and funders dealing with this issue. This commentary provides an overview of recent efforts by the ARC to convene stakeholders to focus on assisting individuals with substance abuse disorder to access recovery services while pursuing education and training necessary to reenter the workforce and gain employment. Two papers have been prepared to describe this year-long effort. One paper focuses on the participatory methods used to gather …

Perspective On Substance-Abuse Recovery Ecosystem From The Appalachian Regional Commission Federal Co-Chair, Tim Thomas

Journal of Appalachian Health

The Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) is a local, state, and federal partnership focused on economic development in the communities of the Appalachian Region. ARC Federal Co-Chairman Tim Thomas provides his perspective on how an economic development entity, such as ARC, can support efforts to address the Region’s drug crisis in a way that both saves lives and strengthens economic opportunity in communities throughout Appalachia.

Fiscal Challenges And Anticipated Changes To Kentucky's Population Health System, Jeffrey Howard

Journal of Appalachian Health

The hallmark of public health is population-level intervention. However, current public health funding in Kentucky is largely programmatic or disease-based. As a result, public health leaders are not able to appropriately utilize present resources to pursue population health endeavors. However, a recent transformation of the public health system has emphasized multisector partnerships and efficient funding mechanisms that may increase resources to pursue population-level health interventions based on community health assessments.

Place-Based And Non-Place-Based Performing Arts Experiences And First-Generation, Appalachian College Student Engagement, Rachel Schott

Ed.D. Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the pre-college arts experiences of Appalachian college students who participated in place-based and non-place-based performance arts ensembles and, using a qualitative research approach informed by Kuh et al.’s (2005) study on positive student engagement, understand the influence that participation in these ensembles might have on Appalachian students who are the first in their generation to pursue higher education. In this study, the researcher examined student data from 28 first-generation, Appalachian college students who responded to an online survey, and 11 who volunteered to participate in-depth, personal interviews. All the student participants were …

Wolf, Carol E. (Fa 1374), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1374. Student folk studies project titled: “Hazel Daniel’s Songbook,” which includes an alphabetical list of the songs in the collection including “found” and “unfound” songs, along with a bibliography and the lyrics to the “found” songs. Survey sheets may include the title of the song, lyrics and source. Daniel of Hartford, Kentucky and her nephew Larry Daniel collected songs from 1938 until 1948. The songs in this collection are a compilation of songs from student projects: FA 1262 BRADLEY, Peggy Louise, FA 1263 WILSON, Debbe Jean, and FA 1264 WELKER, Susan.

Western Kentucky University Archives Of Folklore And Folklife Manual (Fa 1373), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1373. Manual titled “Folk Speech Section of WKUAFF,” created to provide organization and conventions for the collection of student folk projects created by folk studies students for the WKU Archives of Folklore and Folklife or the Folklife Archives. The manual includes survey sheets with responses from a brief questionnaire about vocabulary, dialect, and linguistics across Kentucky. This collection also includes questionnaires from other student projects used to gather vocabulary about a particular subject, i.e. mules, quilting, folk songs, remedies, etc.

Seeking Care At Free Episodic Health Care Clinics In Appalachia, Malerie Lazar, Sandra Thomas, Lisa Davenport

Journal of Appalachian Health

Background: People who live in rural Appalachia experience a wide variety of problems when seeking access to health care. Health care disparities continue to be one of the most complex and prevalent problems, and many barriers exist for impoverished men and women such as a lack of education, complications with health insurance, and personal distrust of healthcare providers.

Purpose: A critical gap in the literature is the unheard voice of persons in rural underserved areas. The purpose of this study was to explore the perspectives of persons in rural Appalachia who seek healthcare services at free episodic health care clinics, …

Skin Cancer And Uv Exposure-Related Behaviors Among Appalachian And Non-Appalachian Adults, Minal Patel, Katrina Serrano, Elise Rice, Chan Thai, Kelly Blake, Robin C. Vanderpool

Journal of Appalachian Health

Introduction: Appalachian communities experience elevated rates of cancer incidence and mortality relative to other regions in the U.S. Specifically, melanoma mortality rates are higher in Appalachia compared to the national average, despite comparable incidence rates.

Purpose: To examine differences in self-reported history of skin cancer and prevalence of two UV exposure behaviors between Appalachian and non-Appalachian adults in a nationally representative sample.

Methods: Data are from four cross-sectional cycles of the Health Information National Trends Survey (2011–2014) (N=14,451). We examined sunscreen use and tanning bed use, and self-reported history of melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancer. Descriptive and weighted …

Impact Of The Affordable Care Act On Referral To Care For People Living With Hiv In Appalachia, Cameron A. Wade, Timothy N. Crawford, Nicole Leedy, Alice C. Thornton

Journal of Appalachian Health

Introduction: The Affordable Care Act (ACA) enacted on March 23, 2010 significantly impacted access to healthcare for people living with HIV (PLWH). Expansion of care was accomplished in three areas: eliminating exclusions for pre-existing conditions, elimination of lifetime caps on healthcare expenditures, and expansion of Medicaid eligibility.

Purpose: This study evaluated the impact of state implementation of the ACA Medicaid expansion on referral to HIV care at a Ryan White federally funded clinic in Kentucky (University of Kentucky Bluegrass Care Clinic [UK BCC]).

Methods: Retrospective chart review of all newly enrolled patients at the UK BCC between March 2010 and …

A Nutritional And Environmental Analysis Of Local Food Pantries Accessible To College Students In Rural North Carolina, Emily E. Frymark, Jonathon Stickford, Alisha Farris

Journal of Appalachian Health

Introduction: Food insecurity is a growing concern among college students and is especially prevalent in rural areas. Food pantries often serve as a resource to food insecure individuals yet, their policies, standards, and nutritional quality vary due to the unpredictability of food donations.

Purpose: To examine the nutritional quality of food items and adherence of best practices at local food pantries accessible to college students near a university in rural Appalachia.

Methods: Three food pantries in North Carolina were selected due to their proximity to a local, rural university. Food items were analyzed for nutrient and food …

Use And Perceptions Of A Campus Food Pantry Among Food Insecure College Students: An Exploratory Study From Appalachia, Laura Mcarthur, Kimberly S. Fasczewski, Alisha Farris, Miranda R. Petrone

Journal of Appalachian Health

Introduction: Food insecurity has emerged as a public health problem among college students in Appalachia, jeopardizing their physical, mental, and emotional health and academic success. Campus food pantries have been established in this region, but no data are available concerning student use or perception of services.

Purpose: This study measured use and perceptions of a campus food pantry by students at a mid-sized university in rural North Carolina.

Methods: An online questionnaire collected behavioral and perceptual data, and follow-up interviews explored these variables. Descriptive statistics with significance at p<0.05 and thematic analytical procedures were used.

Results: Questionnaires were submitted by 896 of 6000 recruited students (14.9%), …

The Need For Evidence-Based Interventions To Reduce Food Insecurity Among College Students, Sarah Brothers, Stephanie Jilcott-Pitts Phd

Journal of Appalachian Health

Food insecurity is defined as insufficient resources to meet food needs. This is a global problem but is not confined to those countries identified as poor. One group of Americans who are particularly affected, and for whom the effects are particularly severe, is college students.

The Making And Unmaking Of An Appalachian “Home”: Tensions Between Tourism And Housing Development In Gatlinburg, Tennessee, J. Hope Amason

Anthropology and Museum Studies Faculty Scholarship

This article examines the economic and symbolic dimensions of redevelopment in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. I focus on one particular project, the East Parkway at Baskins Creek Bypass District, which concerned ten acres that contained a vital housing resource for low-income tourism-industry workers: residential motels. I connect Gatlinburg’s housing crisis with changing labor patterns in the wake of economic restructuring. I present two letters submitted by real estate developers and solicited by the City of Gatlinburg. In analyzing the letters, I identify two tensions: (1) between workers’ homes and the aesthetics of “Appalachian” tourism, and (2) between representations of workers and the …

A Damn Short Prayer, Beth Jane Toren

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This poster presents a transcript poem created with murder tales in oral history recordings. Leveraging the creative arts of storytelling, transcript poetry and visual orality, the poster brings light and music to Appalachian storyteller voices in tales of shady murders.

The handout presents the poem with visual orality methods juxtaposed beside Standard English orthographic transcription, enabling a visual comparison, a link a video with graphic text and the original voice recordings, and brief readings about concepts and methods.

Ecojustice, Religious Folklife And A Sound Ecology, Jeff Todd Titon

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Folk, traditional, and indigenous ecological knowledges have a significant role to play in ecojustice. A case study in the traditional ecological knowledge among one of the religious communities with whom I have spent several decades illustrates how they embody the main principle and three fields of an ecological rationality: the community of inter-related beings; the ways the beings participate in that community or place; and the relations of nature and the nonhuman world to humans and human nature. Ecological rationality stands in contrast to economic rationality, a branch of instrumental reason exemplified by what economists call rational choice theory. An …

Reviewer Acknowledgments For 2019, F. Douglas Scutchfield Md, Erin N. Haynes, Erin Bouldin, Robert M. Shapiro Ii, Tim Marema, Charlotte S. Seidman

Journal of Appalachian Health

The Editorial Team extends a heart-felt “thank you” to those who have given their time and expertise in the past year to participate in this process with the Journal of Appalachian Health. We know that you have many competing pressures on your time, and that you are not financially compensated for the time you spend reviewing manuscripts. We hope that there are other forms of compensation that make the sacrifice worth the effort.

A Healthy Attitude: Rural Leaders In Tn County Organize To Address Well-Being In Appalachia, Tim Marema, Erin Bouldin

Journal of Appalachian Health

When it came to formal philanthropy, Grundy County was not on the map. That changed with the 2012 establishment of South Cumberland Community Fund, which serves the plateau portions of Grundy, Franklin, and Marion counties.

Appalachian Environmental Health Literacy: Building Knowledge And Skills To Protect Health, Anna G. Hoover, Annie Koempel, W. Jay Christian, Kimberly I. Tumlin, Kelly G. Pennell, Steven Evans, Malissa Mcalister, Lindell E. Ormsbee, Dawn Brewer

Journal of Appalachian Health

Environmental health literacy (EHL) is an emerging, multidisciplinary field that promotes understanding of how environmental exposures can affect human health. After discussing the regional relevance of environmental health knowledge and skills, this article describes three ongoing Appalachian projects that are focused on measuring and building EHL.

Development And Early Outcomes Of The Watauga Compassionate Community Initiative, North Carolina, Tim Marema, Erin Bouldin

Journal of Appalachian Health

Addressing adverse childhood experiences has become a public health imperative, and communities across the United States are working to develop and implement programs and policies to both prevent childhood trauma and support adults who experienced trauma as children. Here we describe the development of the Watauga Compassionate Community Initiative (WCCI) in Watauga, County, North Carolina.

Access To Autism Spectrum Disorder Services For Rural Appalachian Citizens, Angela Scarpa, Laura S. Jensen, Denis Gracanin, Sharon L. Ramey, Angela V. Dahiya, L. Maria Ingram, Jordan Albright, Alyssa J. Gatto, Jen P. Scott, Lisa Ruble

Journal of Appalachian Health

Background: Low-resource rural communities face significant challenges regarding availability and adequacy of evidence-based services.

Purposes: With respect to accessing evidence-based services for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), this brief report summarizes needs of rural citizens in the South-Central Appalachian region, an area notable for persistent health disparities.

Methods: A mixed-methods approach was used to collect quantitative and qualitative data during focus groups with 33 service providers and 15 caregivers of children with ASD in rural southwest Virginia.

Results: Results supported the barriers of availability and affordability of ASD services in this region, especially relating to the need for more ASD-trained providers, …

Introduction To The New “Early Reports Of Innovation” Section, Erin Bouldin, Tim Marema

Journal of Appalachian Health

The Journal of Appalachian Health is introducing a new section this issue. While the journal is centralizing some of the best research and commentary on Appalachian health, the editorial team felt that practice-focused groups, organizations, and agencies may not be fully represented in the publication.

Barn-Raising On The Digital Frontier: The L.A.U.N.C.H. Collaborative, Bradford W. Hesse, David Ahern, Michele Ellison, Eliah Aronoff-Spencer, Robin C. Vanderpool, Karen Onyeije, Michael C. Gibbons, Timothy W. Mullett, Ming-Yuan Chih, Victoria Attencio, Grant Patterson, Jessica Boten, Christopher Hartshorn, Ben Bartolome, Katie Gorscak, Melanie Mccomsey, Alexandra Hubenko, Bin Huang, Corey Baker, Don Norman

Journal of Appalachian Health

A meta-analysis of oncology papers from around the world revealed that cancer patients who lived more than 50 miles away from hospital centers routinely presented with more advanced stages of disease at diagnosis, exhibited lower adherence to prescribed treatments, presented with poorer diagnoses, and reported a lower quality of life than patients who lived nearer to care facilities. Connected health approaches—or the use of broadband and telecommunications technologies to evaluate, diagnose, and monitor patients beyond the clinic—are becoming an indispensable tool in medicine to overcome the obstacle of distance.

Introducing The L.A.U.N.C.H. Collaborative, F. Douglas Scutchfield Md, Kevin Patrick

Journal of Appalachian Health

The L.A.U.N.C.H. Collaborative: Linking & Amplifying User-Centered Networks through Connected Health: A Demonstration of Broadband-Enabled Connected Health and Community-Based Co-Design brings together a group of organizations that are eager to use Appalachian Kentucky as a site for the development of a project aimed at creating an environment that addresses two of the nation’s major concerns about cancer. First, individuals who live in rural and remote areas are more likely to die of cancer than those who live in urban or suburban settings. And second, geographic obstacles hinder their ability to access evidence-based strategies that can prevent cancer or treat it …

0861: J. Q. Dickinson And Company Records, 1905-1996, Marshall University Special Collections

Guides to Manuscript Collections

This collection has been divided into three series: Time Logs and Material Production Records, Financial and Transactional Business Records, and Business and Personal Files. Time Logs and Material Production Records include time logs for workers, including tasks completed and rate of pay for both salt, natural gas, and chemical production, as well as production records and statistics for both natural gas and salt. Financial and Transactional Business Records include documents related to the sale of salt, chemicals, coal, and other materials or the purchase of materials by J. Q. Dickinson and Company. Business and Personal Files are divided by client …

The Mothman And Other Strange Tales: Shaping Queer Appalachia Through Folkloric Discourse In Online Social Media Communities, Brenton Watts

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

Little work has been conducted on the intersections of queer and Appalachian identities, in part because these two identities are viewed as incompatible (Mann 2016). This study uses a multimodal critical discourse analytic approach to examine the Instagram posts of the Queer Appalachia Project, which represent a substantial body of discourse created by and for queer Appalachians. Of specific interest to this analysis are those posts which employ folkloric figures, such as West Virginia’s Mothman, to do identity work that is queer, Appalachian, and queer-Appalachian. Often, this act is accomplished through juxtaposition with Appalachian imagery and the reclamation of homophobic …

Resilience In The Mountains: Exploring The Labor And Motives Of Food-Caregiver Women Repairing Broken Food Systems In West Virginia Communities, Heidi Lynn Gum

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Over the past four years the Food Justice Lab, now housed within the Center for Resilient Communities at West Virginia University, hosted a series of food access planning workshops across the state of West Virginia. Mobilizing more than 200 participants, the Nourishing Networks workshop training program was designed to build grassroots capacity for food system change. Eighty-percent of workshop participants were women and dialogues recorded at these events revealed how women are disproportionately impacted by food insecurity and disproportionately labor to repair a broken food system. Women in West Virginia are not only growing food, feeding their families, selling it …

Making A Dent, Emily Morwood

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

West Virginia’s opioid-related death rates have surpassed any other state since 2014, with projections that it will continue to do so. With the epidemic, largely negative and stereotypical accusations have come, which have led to “othering,” or the concept of making groups ‘other’ due to their differences. This documentary project’s purpose is to address those that have been put in those othered groups through the concept of Standpoint Theory, which argues that insiders to a situation should tell their stories, rather than outsiders. The project aimed to allow the participants to tell their perspectives on the epidemic as insiders in …