The Brookings-AEI Commission on U.S. Rural Prosperity has been visiting communities across the country to hear about the challenges they’re facing and what they’re doing to overcome those odds.
Tony Pipa, senior fellow at the Center for Sustainable Development at the Brookings Institute, was one of the panelists at a public hearing Wednesday night at Hazard Community and Technical College. He said Hazard has been very intentional about engaging young people.
“I do think that there is something special about Hazard in that they've been able to build a younger leadership class and sort of a belief of opportunity being here for people who are really drawn by the attributes of the community, that want to live in a smaller community,” Pipa said.
At the Perry County event, three local leaders came to the table to discuss education, rural health care and opportunities for young people: Dreama Gentry, president and CEO of Partners for Rural Impact; Rocky Massey, chief of staff for Appalachian Regional Healthcare (ARH); and Luke Glaser, Hazard city councilman and Hazard High School assistant principal.
Gentry and Partners for Rural Impact work on improving educational outcomes in Appalachia. One program she and her organization have used to help young people in eastern Kentucky is Promise Neighborhoods. It’s a five-year grant program that brings $30 million and about 60 jobs to the communities they work with.
“One of the things we often get asked is, ‘For a federal grant like that, it’s five years. Why would you want a five-year project?’” Gentry said. “And I'm like, ‘If you can give me five years and $30 million and jobs for 60 people, then fantastic things can happen,’ and what we've seen is we can sustain that progress.”
Gentry said she’s seen this program work in four communities since 2010. Another program Gentry mentioned was Full-Service Community Schools, which helps high-poverty schools.
Massey, with ARH, was asked about Medicaid cuts as part of the Trump administration's “Big, Beautiful Bill," which will impact rural hospitals. Massey said the cuts could cause a $1 billion loss over the next 10 years to the ARH system, which serves much of eastern Kentucky. He said they’re working on how to address those cuts.
“Our health care system can only be as successful as the communities we serve and that means that we have to have strong partnerships, strong relationships,” Massey said.
He said the organization has been around for 70 years and plans to be around for at least 70 more.
Glaser, who has taken the lead on a civic fellowship program to get high school students involved in local government, discussed a need to keep the region’s young talent.
“Extraction industry has a long history here,” Glaser said. “It's still an extraction industry. The extraction is now our kids.”
He pointed to years of messaging that people need to leave small towns to further their careers, offering the idea of a federal program similar to AmeriCorps that would keep young people in local jobs.
Massey also talked about the need for nurses and health care workers in Appalachia, arguing for more competitive wages at local hospitals He said the number of beds is decided by the number of staff, and ARH wants to keep people close to home when they need a hospital.
He said ARH is planning to open a training facility in the future to train their own nurses, which is an opportunity for young people to stay in Appalachia.
“We have to be creative,” Massey said. “We have to be competitive, we have to take good care of our people, and we have to be in the school systems.”
Glaser said the local education systems are also responding to this need with dual credit programs for nursing certificates.
Community members were also allowed to come up and speak to the panel about their experiences, concerns and questions.
Hannah Collett, a Hazard native who took part in Glaser’s civic fellowship program and attended the event, said investment in her community is something she’s really interested in.
“I do not believe there are nearly enough people that really seek this place out and come and want to hear from us,” Collett said. “Nobody really comes [and] tries to listen to our perspective on anything.”
She said this has been an ongoing problem but thinks it’s improving as more work to highlight the region is done. To understand why places like Hazard are special to people, Collett said it takes time.
“This environment is just rich with different perspectives and different ways to keep communities alive,” Collett said. “People kind of fall in love with that once they get here and actually get past that, ‘Oh my gosh, I'm in Appalachia.’”
