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Expanding access to essential eye care in West Virginia

West Virginia faces a critical healthcare challenge: limited access to timely and essential eye care services, particularly in rural communities. Patients across the state experience prolonged wait times due to a shortage of ophthalmologists, leading to delays in diagnosis and treatment for potentially serious eye conditions. But the solution to this growing crisis is within reach. By allowing optometrists to practice to the full extent of their education and training, we can improve access to care, reduce patient wait times, and enhance the overall health of our communities. Doctors ...

Protecting Medicaid means protecting mental health care in West Virginia

Medicaid is a lifeline for more than 72 million Americans, including people with mental health and substance use conditions, pregnant women, children, people with disabilities, working families and veterans. It is also the largest funder of mental health and substance use care in the United States, covering over 40% of non-elderly adults with mental health and substance use disorders. As executive director of NAMI Greater Wheeling soon to encompass all of West Virginia, part of the National Alliance on Mental Illness—the nation’s largest grassroots mental health organization—I ...

Happy birthday to Bon Jovi and Ron Howard

Has there ever been a time when you hear or see something that makes you stop in your tracks and say to yourself, “Oh my gosh, I feel so old?” Well I have. I’ve experienced this quite a few time in my life. There are times when I might be lying there, watching television and feel like I’m still a teenager. Notice I said “lying” there, because whenever I move or bend over I can definitely tell I am not. But I have never felt as old as I did the other day when I was putting together this Valley Life section of the paper. In the Today in History section, I noticed it ...

History in the Hills: Preserving our past

I have heard it said that when someone passes away, it’s like a library burning down. And naturally every year, we lose more and more knowledge retained in the lives and experiences of those who have gone before us. Last week, I lost my grandmother, Lois Carpini, who lived to the ripe old age of 97. What more could one ask for but to have someone in their life for so long. I am so lucky that she lived a good long life, and that she got to know my wife and our four children who loved her dearly. My grandmother meant so much to me, and she will always hold a special place in my heart. ...

Moving mountains made of molehills

As your lone state government reporter here in Charleston, I have to cover both the House of Delegates and state Senate at the same time. Sometimes this means going to one chamber or the other. Sometimes that means having two computers open when two different committees are meeting at the same time. This also means I must prioritize the bills and resolutions I write about. I very rarely write about bills and resolutions that are not taken up by committees in the House and Senate. I joke that I’m the tyrannosaurus rex from Jurassic Park: I respond to movement. Because I do not have ...

The more things change in journalism

I went back to school on Feb. 12...sort of. Several of our Ogden Newspapers editors from the region were invited to visit the campus of West Virginia University that day for a tour of the university’s Media Innovation Center, meet with faculty, observe part of a class, and then take a trip over to the offices of the Daily Athenaeum and WWVU-FM, also known as U92 The Moose. Having attended what is now known as West Liberty University for my under-graduate education, I never had the “big college” experience. That was OK for me. It still is. It was a smaller campus, with fewer ...