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Maintaining credit remains important

Some of us may have shied away from looking at our credit scores once the holiday shopping was over, but WalletHub took a look anyway and found perhaps we’d better do a little work. In its report the States With the Largest Credit Score Decreases, West Virginia ranked 11th in the country. The average credit score in the Mountain State fell by 0.61 percent between the third quarters of 2023 and 2024. In fact, by the end of the third quarter of 2024, the average credit score in the state was 647. Ohio is doing a little better, with a rank of 22nd. In the Buckeye State, the average ...

Need for blood always is great

If the weather has been a hindrance to your daily (or weekly) routine, think about what it has meant to organizations dependent upon the help of others to fulfill their missions. For the American Red Cross, January can be a difficult month. Weather is factor, yes, but so is the active cold and flu season, which may make it harder for some to keep blood donation appointments or be eligible to donate. “The start of the new year is one of the most challenging times to collect blood products as the threat of severe winter weather builds and can often lead to widespread blood drive ...

Chamber merger will be beneficial

The merger of the Follansbee and Wellsburg chambers of commerce into a single organization representing businesses for all of Brooke County will help to strengthen the ties of our local communities. The two chambers have done well over the years, working on behalf of their members, which currently include close to 150 businesses from our area, and coming together as one chamber offers the opportunity to provide even more benefit for the memberships. That was already shown last year with the expansion of the Follansbee Chamber’s educational grant program, which now is able to ...

Syringe programs need second look

Whether it be willful ignorance or a genuine misunderstanding of the broad range of strategies necessary to tackle a dual public health crisis in Appalachia, elected officials and policymakers are handicapping efforts against one of the major dangers spawned by our region’s substance abuse epidemic. A KFF Health News report followed up on federal health officials’ effort a few years back to assess an outbreak of HIV in central Appalachia. The outbreak has been fueled by the shared use of needles among those who inject opioids or methamphetamine. But syringe exchange programs ...

Critical thinking remains important

During an age in which a universe of information is at most people’s fingertips, it is no surprise to learn some are changing their approach to how they consume what they consider to be news. In fact, Pew Research Center analysts, with funding from the Knight Foundation, reported in November a study showing approximately 20 percent of Americans say they regularly get what they consider to be news from digital influencers — most of whom (85 percent) are found on Elon Musk’s social media platform X. Only a slightly higher number of those who responded said they were Republicans ...

LevelUp WV helps West Virginians

As West Virginia’s economy diversifies and the education and career paths of the past are no longer the right fit for as many students, the state’s young people are taking advantage of a program that allows them to take college courses — for free — while they are still in high school. In fact, since the start of the LevelUp WV program, the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission says dual enrollment programs have grown by more than 11 percent across the state. That is encouraging news. “Studies have shown that students who do dual enrollment are more likely to ...