ROLLA – The Missouri Attorney General announced that any state opioid settlement money would include rural areas.
The group Your Community Cares Rural Health Coalition has been urging the Missouri AG Eric Schmitt to ensure that rural health organizations get their fair share of whatever Missouri ultimately receives from its lawsuits against opioid manufacturers. They have fought on behalf of the state's rural communities, saying that opioid treatment programs in these areas are underfunded.
The coalition recently invited Schmitt and representatives from the U.S. Attorney's office in St. Louis to Rolla to discuss the current state and future of their programs as well as potential funding.
Members of the coalition laid out the challenges and troubling statistics that rural counties are faced with when dealing with opioid addiction that included a lack of health care providers, high levels of poverty and low population density as key factors.
“I think both the Missouri Attorney General and the U.S. Attorney General that were here were very open minded to hearing what our members from our community had to say and were very engaged with their stories and I definitely think that they learned that the situation is very different when you speak rural versus urban,” said Felisha Richards, director of Your Community Cares Rural Health Coalition.
“They’ve seen how difficult it sometimes can be – we’re not trying to say that anybody’s life is more important that anyone else – we’re just trying to show how difficult the full picture is in rural (areas) and I definitely think the full picture was there.”
Richards explained the alarming statistics that show a similar amount of people in rural Missouri being addicted to or having their lives taken by opioids as in a larger population such as St. Louis County.
“Again, we’re not trying to say that anyone’s life is valued more,” said Richards. “We just want to highlight that we are losing people too and we are just as important. These lives and these family members are just as important as anyone across the state.”