tag | rural health care

Asturias’ vision swelled beyond a clinic. He wanted to train people and build space to do research “to better monitor these illnesses,”

In many ways, rural communities have become the face of the nation’s opioid epidemic. Drug overdose deaths are more common by population size in rural areas than in urban ones. And rural doctors prescribe opioids more often by far. Meanwhile, rural Americans have fewer alternatives to treat their very real pain, and they disproportionately lack access to effective addiction medication such as buprenorphine.