CBS News profiles Eula Hall, 86, a lifelong champion for health care in impoverished Appalachia

Eula Hall

This week marks the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson's declaration of the War on Poverty as part of his Great Society program, in his first State of the Union speech. While many stories about poverty in rural America are sad, detailing the struggles people have faced or are still facing, CBS News had an inspiring story Wednesday profiling Eula Hall, an Eastern Kentucky woman who has dedicated her life to fighting to improve health care in rural impoverished Appalachia. Hall's life has also been chronicled in the book Mud Creek Medicine.

Hall, 86, told CBS, "We didn’t have indoor plumbing, we didn’t have running water. There was no health care for the people who didn’t have any insurance or money... people died because they didn’t get the proper health care." Hall, who left school after eighth-grade, "began working with community organizers who taught her how to fight to get things done," Don Dahler writes for CBS. "She eventually became the driving force in changing her corner of Appalachia."

In Hall's neck of the woods, Floyd County, 90 percent of the wells were contaminated with bacteria, Dahler writes. Hall decided to do something about it. "In the late 1960s, she got federal funds to have clean water piped in from the closest water treatment plant. Using federal grants and private donations, Hall also built the first and only medical clinic in the county. What began as a shack in 1973 is now a modern facility with its own doctors, X-rays and pharmacy, serving over 7,000 patients a year." Hall told CBS, "I love this place because I know when they open that door and they walk in, they're going to be treated with respect, and they're going to be treated with the best we've got to offer." (Read more) (CBS News video)