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Today is Election Day. Across North Carolina, voters are deciding who will make decisions about healthcare, education, public infrastructure and essential resources and services.  But...

How do small rural communities in North Carolina influence decisions about healthcare, economic development, and public resources? In this episode of Rural Narratives, host Layna...

Across western North Carolina, residents are working alongside local government, churches and other organizations to identify where people are being left offline and find ways...

What does it take to participate fully in community life when so much of it happens online? In rural western North Carolina, digital access can...

In Columbus County in rural North Carolina, the COVID-19 pandemic changed how Lisa Richey thought about public health. Lisa came to Columbus County as a...

Vicki Wiggins worries about what happens when young people grow up surrounded by violence and become “unfortunately unfazed” by it. In Hertford County, Mayors Weyling...

How do we build strong public health systems? In rural Hertford County, North Carolina, the answer begins with people. These stories emerged from community story...

What does health look like in a rural community? In Columbus County, North Carolina, it looks like a long drive to specialized medical care. It...

Agriculture contributes billions of dollars to North Carolina’s economy and helps put food on tables across the country. Yet many of the workers who plant,...

Across this series, we’ve explored the stories told about rural communities. This episode examines how rural health is framed — and what those narratives reveal...

Public health depends on science. But science alone doesn’t build trust. In rural eastern North Carolina, trust is shaped by lived experience — by whether...

Health is often talked about as a matter of personal choice. But the truth is, our well-being is shaped by much more than individual decisions...

Black communities have long been central to rural life in the South, helping shape the culture, economy and civic life of the places they call...

In southeastern North Carolina, residents in Columbus County face some of the steepest challenges to living a healthy life. They consistently have the lowest health...

In this week’s episode, we visited Down Home North Carolina, a non-profit organization that builds rural, multiracial and working-class power across the state through local...

In our first episode, we ask: Who gets to shape the stories that define rural communities? Welcome to Rural Narratives, a new podcast about public...