HIV’s Threat to Rural America

What Next | Daily News and Analysis

Slate Podcasts

News, Daily News, News Commentary

4.3 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 11 December 2019

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Two maps can help tell the story of a looming public health problem in rural America. One, published by the CDC, shows 220 of the most vulnerable counties in America either experiencing or at risk of an HIV outbreak. The other, published by the Washington Post, shows where pharmaceutical companies sent most of their pain pills at the height of the opioid crisis. These maps almost perfectly matchup. And in Cabell County, West Virginia, a place acutely affected by the opioid crisis, 80 new cases of HIV have been diagnosed since last year. Today on the show, what’s going on in West Virginia and what can be done to help? Guests: A. Toni Young, AIDS activist and founder of the Community Education Group. Dr. Steven W. Thrasher, professor of journalism and LGBTQ health at Northwestern University. He recently wrote an op-ed in the New York Times. Slate Plus members get bonus segments and ad-free podcast feeds. Sign up now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Tony Young moved from Washington, D.C. to West Virginia, looking for a change.
0:11.0	It was like my weekend place. I actually moved out here thinking I was actually kind of
0:16.6	getting out of HIV.
0:18.8	She'd been working as an HIV AIDS advocate, running an organization called the Community Education
0:23.7	Group. She kept in touch with her public health contacts back in Washington. And one day,
0:28.9	she was on the phone with one of them, a woman named Karina.
0:32.9	And we were talking one day. I had been out here for, I don't know, like a month after
0:40.0	kind of shutting down most of my direct services in D.C. and I was like, I don't know, maybe
0:47.3	I should do something out here. And she's like, you're kidding, right? And I was like, no,
0:52.8	what do you mean? And she's like, let me send you some stuff.
0:58.9	This is when Tony first saw the map.
1:02.4	I was literally sitting on my porch and my mouth fell open.
1:05.7	Why did it fall open?
1:06.7	It fell open because I didn't know that it was this bad.
1:15.9	This map, Tony was looking at. It had been released by the Centers for Disease Control.
1:20.2	It showed places that agency thought were most vulnerable to an HIV outbreak. Not big
1:26.2	cities, but rural counties, including more than half of the counties in West Virginia.
1:33.2	That's a pretty ridiculous map, when you think about it. And I called her back and I was
1:38.8	like, who's working on this stuff? This is crazy. Where's the money for this? And Karina
1:44.5	was like, there's no resources. Nobody's working on it. And I guess you and I'll go up the
1:50.5	phone.
1:54.7	This map, it almost perfectly matches up with a different map. One that shows where the
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Slate Podcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Slate Podcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.