Coronavirus overwhelms local health departments, most of which have been weakened by a decade of budget cuts

"A widespread failure in the United States to invest in public health has left local and state health departments struggling to respond to the coronavirus outbreak and ill-prepared to face the swelling crisis ahead," report Julie Bosman and Richard Fausset of The New York Times. "Many health departments are suffering from budget and staffing cuts that date to the Great Recession and have never been fully restored."

The National Association of County and City Health Officials told the Times that their agencies have nearly one-quarter fewer people on their payrolls than they did in 2008. "Many of them have made their situation plain: They are heading into a crisis without the resources they need," the story says, quoting Scott Lockard, director of a department that serves seven counties in Eastern Kentucky: “People are wearing several different hats and sharing job responsibilities for things that they were not doing before, so we’re already operating at peak efficiency and we have no capacity when something like this happens.”

Emergency legislation moving through Congress will give local and state health agencies $950 million, but John Auerbach, president and chief executive of Trust for America’s Health, "said that the money, which must be spent on coronavirus-related actions, will not solve long-term problems many agencies face," the Times reports. Its story ends with this vignette:

Debra Nagel, a nurse who specializes in communicable disease and preparedness, answered the phone at the Jasper County Health Department in Rensselaer, Ind., and said she would be happy to briefly chat about her department’s response to the coronavirus outbreak.
“I think the main challenge is —” she said, stopped short by another phone trilling in the background.
“I guess I don’t really have the time to talk,” she said. “I’m the only one here.”
She apologized and hung up.

When health officials talk about strong measures to 'flatten the curve' to fight the coronavirus, this is what they mean

Measures that are being called "drastic" and "extreme" are necessary to keep the coronavirus and its covid-19 disease from overwhelming the U.S. health-care system, according to health experts and public officials. This chart by roughly illustrates what happens when there is no action against a pandemic, and what happens when interventions flatten the transmission of the virus to a point where the health-care system can cope with it. It shows a hopeful scenario; The New York Times has an interactive version of this chart, with various scenarios.

President is not following health experts' crisis playbook; governors and local officials are taking a different tack

President Trump has broken every rule in the top federal experts' playbook as he deals with the coronavirus, report Carolyn Johnson and William Wan of The Washington Post.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's 450-page manual has some simple rules, they write: "Be consistent. Be accurate. Don’t withhold vital information, the CDC manual says. And above all, don’t let anyone onto the podium without the preparation, knowledge and discipline to deliver vital health messages."

One chapter in the manual is devoted to “choosing the right spokesperson,” they write, “but the government’s leading health experts have had to repeatedly cede the microphone to politicians — with the nation’s top health officials repeatedly canceling news conferences to make room for Vice President Pence or Trump or to avoid upstaging other White House announcements.”

All that is having an effect, and not a good one, on the public, they write: "Crucial messaging also appears to be failing to reach or convince many in America. Nearly 50 million in the country are 65 or older — the most vulnerable age group for severe symptoms and death. But many are shrugging off pleas for them to practice social distancing."

Asked today about the mixed messages he had been sending, specifically why he shook the hands of many people at a ceremony the day before, Trump said, "Because it almost becomes a habit . . . It's sort of a natural reflex, and we're all getting out of it . . . Shaking hands is not a great thing to be doing right now, I agree."

Trump spoke as he started a White House press conference with other officials and experts. He twice said he would leave the lectern to the others and go to the Oval Office, but reporters kept asking him questions, and he kept answering them.

Later in the press conference, Dr. Jerome Adams, the U.S. surgeon general, said the time for political finger-pointing is over, and it's time for more news stories about how Americans can protect themselves and access the federal resources being provided.

Governors and local officials may not have read the CDC manual, but they are following it more closely. In an opinion piece, Travis Waldron of Yahoo News contrasted Trump's approach with that of Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who "has struck a calm but urgent tone and empowered Kentucky’s public health officials to speak frankly and clearly about the depth of the outbreak in the Bluegrass State, the potential for it to get worse, and the steps his government is taking to mitigate it."

At his press conference this afternoon, Beshear and other officials began practicing social distancing, no longer clustering on a dais, as Trump and his aides did, but taking turns at the lectern and standing at least six feet apart. "We want to model the type of behavior we should be doing," Beshear said.

Series about the sexual assault crisis in rural Alaska up for annual Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting

A newspaper series about the sexual assault crisis in rural Alaska is one of six finalists for the annual Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, awarded by Harvard University's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy.

The Anchorage Daily News partnered with ProPublica's Local Reporting Network to produce "Lawless," a series that uncovered a sexual-assault crisis in rural Alaska and how the lack of public-safety services makes it worse. After the series ran, Attorney General William Barr declared the lack of law enforcement in rural Alaska a federal emergency, and his Department of Justice promised more than $52 million to improve the situation. The U.S. attorney in Anchorage announced the hiring of more rural prosecutors, and Gov. Mike Dunleavy said the state will hire 15 more state troopers.

Daily News reporter Kyle Hopkins pursued the story after he discovered that more than 70 rural towns didn't have local law enforcement, and that the state hadn't enforced village police hiring standards. In some towns, convicted criminals, including sex offenders, had been hired as police officers, Clark Merrefield reports for Journalist's Resource.

The series also recently won a Scripps Howard Award in the Community Journalism category. The Goldsmith Prize winner receives $25,000, and the other five finalists receive $10,000. The prize is funded by the Greenfield Foundation. The winner was meant to be announced Thursday, but the awards ceremony was canceled because of coronavirus precautions. The winner will be announced soon online, according to the Goldsmith Awards website.

Covid-19: ISPs pressed to suspend data throttling, fees for overages; some big firms do, but big wireless carriers silent

Many workers are working remotely and students learning from home because of the coronavirus, but that means increased internet and wireless usage. That could cause some people to exceed their monthly data caps, resulting in extra fees and often throttled data speeds.

"Eighteen U.S. senators, all members of the Democratic caucus, sent a letter to internet service providers urging them to 'temporarily suspend broadband caps and associated fees or throttling for all communities affected by covid-19' and to coordinate with schools to provide free or low-cost broadband for students," Jon Brodkin reports for ArsTechnica.  The two Democrats on the Federal Communications Commission support the notion; the three Republicans have not commented.

Comcast, which has a wider rural reach than most internet providers, announced Thursday that it will increase speeds for its budget internet program and will make the program free for new low-income customers for two months, WXYZ-TV in Detroit reports.

AT&T is suspending broadband data caps for home internet customers until further notice, Karl Bode reports for Vice. He also reports that Mediacom is giving all internet customers 50GB of extra data through March 31. Charter and Verizon do not impose data caps or overage fees on home internet customers. 

However, many rural customers rely on wireless for their home internet, and none of the major carriers have said they will suspend data caps or throttling, Brodkin reports.

Older Americans, more prevalent in rural areas and more susceptible to covid-19, weigh warnings; many are skeptical

To view a larger version of this map, click on it.

"As the coronavirus continues its spread across the world and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that older Americans are among those who face the highest risk of hospitalization and death, retirees from Florida to Alaska are weighing whether to continue living their normal lives or do whatever it takes to preserve them," report Darryl Fears and Brady Dennis of The Washington Post. That's of special concern in rural America, where the population is older than average.

The writers report from The Villages, a Florida complex that is one of the largest retirement communities in the United States. Most residents responding to a survey on the development's Facebook page said the crisis is being overblown. "Against mounting advice from federal and private health experts, many expressed a determination to move forward with travel excursions, such as cruises," they report. "A significant number of other residents said they were heeding experts’ advice and canceling cruise reservations, or at least waiting to see whether cruise lines would do so."

Health experts and public officials have warned that people over 60 and those with underlying medical conditions are the most susceptible to the virus. Some think rural areas may be more vulnerable due to a shortage of health-care services, while others think the lower population density in rural areas means the virus will spread more slowly there. But rural people are more regular worshipers, and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear asked churches to cancel services after the state's first cluster of covid-19 patients, from rural Harrison County, were found to have a church connection. 

Quick hits: How Biden and Sanders did in rural areas on Super Tuesday; busted oil town turns to arts and culture

Here's a roundup of stories with rural resonance; if you do or see similar work that should be shared on The Rural Blog, email us at heather.chapman@uky.edu.

Kraft Foods Group Inc. and Mondelez Global LLC may pay $16 million to settle regulatory allegations that they manipulated the market for wheat futures. Read more here.

Sen. Bernie Sanders got much less of the rural vote on Tuesday than he did in 2016, while Joe Biden received outsized support from rural areas, The Daily Yonder reports. Read more here.

A webinar discussed challenges rural school districts face in helping students access high-speed internet. Read more or listen to the recording here.

A busted oil-boom town in Arkansas is making a comeback by leaning on art and culture. Read more here.

The 2020 Young Farmers and Ranchers Conference has been canceled because of the coronavirus. Read more here.

New book examines RFK's 1968 tour of Eastern Kentucky through the lens of the locals involved in the trip

When Robert F. Kennedy toured rural Eastern Kentucky in 1968, he said that the area had "marvelous potential" in spite of the obstacles locals faced. The liberal Democrat was welcomed to rural Kentucky back then, but these days the same region has become a Republican stronghold. That contrast intrigued journalist Matthew Algeo and informed how he approached his new book about the visit, Tim Marema reports for The Daily Yonder.

Though the trip has been examined in books, documentaries and other media, All This Marvelous Potential: Robert Kennedy's 1968 Tour of Appalachia (Chicago View Press) brings new details and a fresh angle to the story by telling readers more about the lives of the people who organized, participated in, and witness the visit, Marema reports.

"I tried to build the stories out around a few central characters, and then use them to touch on some central issues, I guess you would say, over the past 50 years," Algeo told Marema. "You can’t write a book about Eastern Kentucky without talking about mining, specifically strip mining, and without looking at the War on Poverty. I think people who read the book will find a lot of interesting information there that they might not have known or hadn’t really contextualized."

Algeo told Marema he didn't want the book to be a biography of RFK, nor a "Where Are They Now" update on the locals involved in the 1968 visit. "I don’t think that gives you a lot of information or context," Algeo said.

Seniors live longer these days, but not as long in rural areas, and their lifespans lag many other developed nations

Life expectancy for seniors at age 65 increased across the board from 2000 to 2016, but not nearly as much in rural areas, according to a newly published data analysis.

Urban and coastal seniors survive much longer than seniors in rural areas and the nation's interior—especially areas like Appalachia and the East South Central states (Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi). The geographic gap emerged around 1999 or 2000 and has been widening since 2000, Judith Graham reports for Kaiser Health News.

University of Pennsylvania demographer Samuel Preston spotted the trend using data from the Census Bureau and the National Center for Health Statistics. The longest-living seniors tend to be found in metro areas on the Pacific coast, and the ones with the shortest lifespans live in the rural East South Central states; the life expectancy gap between those two regions was nearly four years.

Men and women had differing life expectancies, according to co-author Yana Vierboom, a researcher at Germany's Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research; by 2016, "life expectancy at age 65 for women in large metropolitan areas was 1.63 years longer than for those in rural areas. For men, the gap was 1.42 years," Graham reports. "Disparities were also highlighted when researchers examined life expectancy at 65 in the U.S. and 16 other developed nations, using 2016 data. Overall, the U.S. was near the bottom of the pack: American men ranked 11th while American women were in 13th place, behind leaders such as Japan, Switzerland, Australia, France, Spain and Canada."

Preston's study identified a reduction in deaths from cardiovascular illnesses like strokes or heart attacks as the biggest reason Americans are living longer. Such illnesses are the number one cause of death in the United States. Preston speculated that rural seniors might be more apt to die from heart attack or stroke because of lack of medical access, and said smoking rates likely had an impact, too. The study did not consider race, income, or education, which probably play a role, Graham reports.

Supreme Court won't hear challenge to ban on bump stocks

"Bump stocks, which allow semi-automatic firearms to fire rapidly like machine guns, will remain banned by the federal government in most instances after the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a case challenging recently imposed regulations," reports Guns & America.

Some states banned bump stocks after one was used in a deadly October 2017 Las Vegas shooting, and in December 2018, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives declared that bump stocks essentially turned a semi-automatic firearm into a fully automatic "machinegun." Since machineguns are tightly regulated at the federal level, that made bump stocks and similar devices effectively illegal, Jeremy Bernfeld reports for Guns America, a two-year partnership among 10 publicly owned media outlets to report on firearms and related issues.

Many gun owners chose not to fight the ban, pointing out that DIY bump stocks can be made easily, and that the law was difficult to enforce. However, some gun-rights activists sued to challenge the ban,. Lower courts upheld it and the Supreme Court opted not to hear the case. Though the case might appear to be about the Second Amendment, Justice Neil Gorsuch said that the case narrowly focused on a legal doctrine that prevents courts from overruling some federal regulations.

Rural schools that close because of the coronavirus must consider digital divide, lack of child care, and kids' hunger

Screenshot of Education Week's map of schools closed due to
the coronavirus; click here to view the interactive version.

Schools all over the nation are considering whether to close in order to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Some school districts have closed for one day to allow for deep cleaning, and some have closed for weeks or longer. Rural superintendents must weigh additional factors when making the decision, including the digital divide, the lack of childcare, and hunger.

Rural students, especially in low-income families, are less likely to have any internet access at home, let alone broadband. That makes distance learning difficult, Andrea Noble reports for Route Fifty.

Also, younger children will need childcare if school is canceled, and it can be difficult for rural parents to find affordable, decent childcare, especially at the last minute. To add to that difficulty, some childcare centers are temporarily closing because of the coronavirus, Anna North reports for Vox.

Another consideration: Rural students who qualify for free or reduced-price school meals may miss meals if schools are closed. Concern about keeping children fed has been a key factor in some high-poverty school districts' decision to stay open, Liz Crampton reports for Politico.

The Department of Agriculture said last weekend that schools forced to close can employ programs used during the summer to feed low-income children. "USDA, on a state-by-state basis, said it will waive the requirement that students must eat in group settings. The department will also allow meals to be served at off-campus sites like libraries and churches. Washington and California have already received such approvals," Crampton reports. "But that allowance only covers areas where more than 50 percent of students qualifying for free or reduced-price meals." School administrators and nutrition groups are pressing the federal government to make more children eligible for free or reduced-price meals during extended school closures.

Over 850,000 children have been affected by such closures so far, some in rural areas, according to Education Week, which is updating its nationwide interactive map of closures twice a day.

An old metal hook could determine whether PG&E is to blame for the deadliest wildfire in California history

This broken C-hook is believed to have triggered the
2018 Camp Fire. (Associated Press photos)

A century-old metal hook on an electric transmission tower may have triggered the deadliest wildfire in California history. "Known as a 'C-hook,' the badly worn piece of metal broke on Nov. 8, 2018, dropping a high-voltage electric line that sparked the Camp Fire, destroying the town of Paradise and killing 85 people," Russell Gold and Katherine Blunt report for The Wall Street Journal.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. agreed in 2019 to pay $1 billion to 14 local governments in the state for the wildfire damage caused by its out-of-date equipment and shoddy maintenance practices—which the company knew were problematic for years before the fire. But PG&E has hundreds of thousands more C-hooks in its 70,000-square-mile territory, and while it is scrambling to replace them, it has no good data on how old they are, Gold and Blunt report.

PG&E could face criminal charges in the wildfire. "Whether PG&E was negligent in inspecting and replacing these hooks has emerged as a key factor in a continuing California investigation that could determine whether the company and some of its former executives face criminal charges for their role in wildfires," Gold and Blunt report. PG&E equipment caused 18 deadly wildfires in 2017 and 2018 that killed more than 100 people, according to state investigators.

Another PG&E C-hook shows how the
equipment can become worn over time.
Experts recommend replacing them
when they're 30 percent worn through.

The FBI's forensic lab is examining the hook now. Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey, who is leading the investigation along with the state attorney general's office, said he expects to decide soon whether to charge the whole company, individuals at the company, or both.

The hook has a long reach. The case "has caught the attention of a federal judge overseeing PG&E’s criminal probation from a safety-related violation stemming from a 2010 natural-gas explosion," the Journal reports. "The judge is now demanding that the company produce more information on what it knows about the hooks and when it learned it."

March 17 teleconference to cover coronavirus prevention and treatment options

The Commonwealth Fund will host a March 17 teleconference briefing for journalists and policymakers to discuss prevention and treatment of the coronavirus. The call will last about an hour and will begin at 12:30 p.m. ET. Register here.

Experts will cover the following topics:

• What policy tools do the federal government and states have at their disposal to address the pandemic, and what actions have they taken so far? 
• How can we expand coverage and access to care through Medicaid, and how can we work with insurers so that no one is deterred from seeking needed treatment?
• What role could emergency federal powers play, and where could they fall short?

The call will be conducted by:

• Kevin Lucia, J.D., M.H.P., Research Professor, Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reforms
• Sara Rosenbaum, J.D., Harold and Jane Hirsh Professor of Health Law and Policy, George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health
• Moderator: Rachel Nuzum, M.P.H., Vice President, Federal and State Health Policy, The Commonwealth Fund

The Commonwealth Fund is a nonprofit dedicated to improving health care and making it more affordable and accessible to all Americans.

ReConnect broadband program application deadline extended to March 31

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has extended the application deadline for the ReConnect pilot program until March 31. The previous deadline was March 16.

The program will provide up to $200 million in grants, $200 million in low-interest loans, and up to $200 million for 50/50 loan/grant combinations. The USDA announced a second round of ReConnect funding on Dec. 12 and began accepting applications on Jan. 31.

Telecommunications companies, rural electric cooperatives and utilities, internet service providers and municipal governments are eligible to receive the funding. The agency will award funds to projects with financially sustainable business models that will bring high-speed internet to rural homes, businesses, farms and community facilities such as health care sites and schools.

For more information about applying for the program, you can access recordings of previous webinars here.

Poor, rural moms with chronic depression may face greater health problems, according to new study

For rural moms with low incomes, chronic depression may be correlated with an increased incidence of other health problems, according to a newly published study.

Researchers from Washington State University analyzed three years' worth of data about 23 mothers with clinical depression, gathered from the ongoing, multi-state Rural Families Speak project. "The findings, published in the Journal of Family Social Work, show that moms who were chronically depressed experienced more health problems, distrusted doctors and had a worse outlook on their lives, compared with moms whose symptoms improved. The mothers’ depression also affected those closest to them," Traci Pedersen reports for Psych Central.

Moms who were chronically depressed and moms who were depressed but improving faced similar struggles in parenting. "However, chronically depressed moms faced greater challenges in dealing with their children’s emotional and behavioral issues, which were often compounded by a lack of childcare options, employment, concerns for delinquent behaviors and day-to-day behavioral management issues," Pedersen reports.

Maternal depression affects the whole family, said Dr. Yoshi Sano, an associate professor at Washington State who leads the Rural Families Speak project and was also the lead author of the paper. "Mothers are one of the main supports of the family, Sano told Pedersen. "They’re raising children, paying bills, and organizing events. When they’re depressed, the entire family is impacted."

Though policymakers often focus on physical health as an obstacle to self-sufficiency for low-income people, mental health is the biggest obstacle for moms and affects everything from family life to employability. But stigma and distrust of health care professionals is a roadblock to treatment, Sano said.

However, mental health access can be limited in rural areas, Tyler Harris reports for Nebraska Farmer. And women who live on farms often face added mental health burdens, said Tina Chasek, associate psychology professor at the University of Nebraska.

"Women in agriculture are sometimes called third-shift workers," Chasek told Harris. "They work outside the home to provide a steady income and insurance benefits. Then they take care of the family and work on the farm, in addition to being social support. So, they have three jobs. If a male farmer is going to talk, it's usually to his wife. Women on the farm often take care of everybody's emotional needs. So, there's a huge burden on them as well."

The Rural Health Information Hub has a Rural Suicide Prevention Toolkit with links to resources that can help rural policymakers implement suicide prevention programs. Click here to access it.

Creating viable dairy policy isn't easy, farm economists say

Coming up with a solid dairy policy is one of the biggest challenges in agricultural policy, for several reasons, Harwood D. Schaffer and Daryll E. Ray of the University of Tennessee write in their latest "Policy Pennings" column.

For one thing, milk is a perishable product with a short shelf life, which makes for a shorter marketing window than many other agricultural products. And as more dairy processors declare bankruptcy or consolidate, many dairy farmers have only a single buyer. "For the most part farmers who are selling milk are not in a competitive market where they can seek out the highest price. They are in a take-it-or-leave-it situation," Schaffer and Ray write.

Also, because it's easier to increase capacity and production in dairy than it is for row crop growers (just keep the cows alive a little longer and milk them more), it's easy to flood local markets with milk products. That leaves smaller dairy farmers especially vulnerable to being unable to find buyers because of supply chain economies of scale, they write. 

Read more here.

Senators urge FCC to make more rural areas eligible for broadband subsidy program, use better data for decisions

On March 9, two dozen senators published an open letter urging Federal Communications Commission chair Ajit Pai to ensure that federal funding for rural broadband expansion will reach the communities that need it most, Makena Kelly reports for The Verge. Most of the senators were Democrats or independents who caucus with Democrats, but one Republican, Cory Gardner of Colorado, also signed the letter.

The agency announced the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund in late January as a replacement for the Connect America Fund. The RDOF will give out $20.4 billion in subsidies for broadband network construction over the next decade, but, according to the senators' letter, communities that have already received funding through the U.S. Department of Agriculture's ReConnect program or state broadband programs won't be eligible, Kelly reports.

Pai did not respond directly to the letter, but said at a Senate Appropriations Committeee hearing Tuesday that he did not want FCC funding to go to companies that had already received funding elsewhere. "The Democratic commissioners suggested that the maps should be fixed before the RDOF auctions move forward," Kelly reports. "Republican commissioners like Pai and Brendan Carr agreed that the maps need updating, but claim that they have enough data identifying wholly unserved communities to proceed with RDOF in those areas before the maps are fixed." The FCC has been criticized for relying on maps that overstate broadband coverage. Some state agencies are trying to create their own coverage maps to gain better access to rural funding.

The letter echoes an open letter to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue published in late February. A bipartisan group of senators called on the USDA to make more communities eligible for its ReConnect program, since areas could not qualify that had already received money from the FCC.

Low-income housing authorities scored based on self-assessment; renters may disagree

It can be difficult for low-income people to find decent subsidized housing through the Section 8 voucher program, but the Department of Housing and Urban Development doesn't know much about it. That's because HUD allows local housing authorities to grade themselves on their success. Over the past five years, at least 90 percent of local housing authorities gave themselves perfect scores in helping people find homes, despite evidence that many are not doing such a great job, The Connecticut Mirror's Jacqueline Rabe Thomas reports for ProPublica's Local Reporting Network.

Through the Section 8 voucher program, which operates in urban and rural areas, HUD pays a portion of the rent for qualified low-income people. But many landlords refuse to rent to those with Section 8 vouchers (though it's illegal), and in many places there isn't much affordable or rentable housing around in the first place, especially in rural areas. On top of that, some local housing authorities don't have enough case workers to shepherd voucher recipients through an often lengthy process, Thomas reports.

In the late 1990s, when HUD was dealing with a reduced staff, the department largely began relying on self-assessments to score local housing authorities. In late 2019, HUD's Office of Inspector General noted that relying on self-assessments was one of the agency's top challenges, Thomas reports.

Rising rents in rural areas make it more and more difficult for people to find affordable housing. Nearly a quarter of the nation's most rural counties have seen a big increase in the past decade in the number of households that spend at least half their income on housing, according to 2019 data.

Farm safety experts share tips for recovering from flooding

AgriSafe Network illustration highlights several health and safety risk factors that cold-weather floods can cause around the farm. Click the image to enlarge it.

Last year's record flooding devastated crops across the Midwest, and this spring is looking pretty soggy too. But damaged or prevented crops aren't the only problems cold-weather floods can cause, according to AgriSafe Network farm safety experts Linda Emanuel and Ellen Duysen, who spoke recently at the 2020 Nebraska Women in Agriculture Conference, Lori Potter reports for the Kearney Hub in Nebraska.

Emanuel is a farmer and registered nurse, and Duysen is the coordinator and outreach specialist for the Central States Center of Agricultural Safety and Health in the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s College of Public Health.

After a flood recedes, farmers and rural residents often must contend with infections from poor sanitation, toxic mold, respiratory issues, contaminated water wells, E. Coli-related intestinal problems, and stress, they told conference attendees. It's also important to pay attention to mental health in the wake of a disaster, Emanuel said, since poor health and nutrition, lack of sleep, weather worries, finances, and isolation can all contribute to stress, Potter reports.

Duysen advised attendees not to wait for a flood to test their private wells, and said that more than 80 percent tested at any time are contaminated, She also advised attendees to make sure they had family and community response plans in place for future floods, Potter reports.

DTN seeking farmers willing to share a local view for its 'View from the Cab' program

If you're a farmer with the itch to speak up, this might be for you. DTN/The Progressive Farmer is seeking two farmers for its 15th annual "View From the Cab" program.

During the growing season, participants agree to talk to a DTN editor on the phone each week about how things are going for you and other local farmers. An editor may visit your farm occasionally during the season, and, if you're comfortable with it, you may be able to share pictures and videos of your farm.

To apply, just email crops technology editor Pamela Smith at pamela.smith@dtn.com and tell her why you want to be a contributor. Share a little bit about your farm, too.

"Contributors generally comment that it helps them feel more engaged in the industry. They are often surprised to find they've accomplished so much each week," Smith writes. Read more here.