News from rural America.

Rural folks face significant clean air and water risks due to EPA cutbacks, a group of policymakers is working to expand rural healthcare via mobile clinics and a new study maps Montana's news landscape.

TRANSCRIPT

♪♪ For the Daily Yonder and Public News Service, this is the news from rural America.

Former employees of the Environmental Protection Agency say proposed cuts to the department could hurt rural Americans the most.

The Trump administration has closed the Environmental Justice Branch of 10 regional offices, and that means those living in rural communities will have fewer protections, while already losing hospitals and health care.

Zeland Hoover is a former senior EPA advisor.

They are sicker because government is no longer stopping polluters from polluting their air and their water.

The administration has proposed cutting the EPA's budget by 65 percent.

Dr. Margo Brown left the agency in 2020 to work at the Environmental Defense Fund.

She says a cut like that would hobble protections on such things as pollution allowed in tap water, a huge rural issue.

It will impair the health and well-being for generations to come.

The biggest gap in rural health care is access and availability, but one group is finding that mobile medical clinics can help.

Driving Health Forward has launched a campaign to bring health care to rural communities instead of asking patients to travel long distances to full-service facilities.

Dr. Philip Levy practices emergency medicine at Wayne State University.

The basic idea is, how can you take services to people and focus those services on the things that people most need?

Supported by the Connecticut-based Leon Lowenstein Foundation, the idea grew out of the mobile health initiative started during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Levy says roaming vehicles bridge gaps between brick-and-mortar clinics and telehealth operations to deliver health care to more people.

Morbidity and mortality rates remain high in rural areas when compared to urban areas, but Levy says mobile clinics can offer many more services.

Is it screening for cardiovascular disease, diabetes, high cholesterol?

Is it cancer screenings?

Is it actual care provision because you don't have specialists?

In Montana, a new study mapped the media landscape and found fewer news sources in rural areas.

Ilana Newman explains.

The Lohr Foundation spent months calling folks all over Montana's 56 counties.

Researcher Daniel Reed says they mapped every news resource they found.

If they're providing original local news, we wanted them included.

We were very agnostic to the media.

He says they counted newspapers, online publications, podcasts with original reporting, and radio, even those that mostly play music, as long as they produce some news.

In all, he says rural areas have more challenges.

Rural places are often the places that are most underrepresented.

They're the places that are most likely to be a media desert.

Five counties had zero news sources, and 28 counties had one.

I'm Ilana Newman.

For the "Daily Yonder" and Public News Service, I'm Roz Brown.

For more rural stories, visit dailyyonder.com.