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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 ...

Working detectors help to save lives

Winter has finally arrived across the region, which means we have entered a season during which we have even more reasons to be cautious about how we heat and light our homes. Working smoke and carbon monoxide detectors are essential. On Christmas Day, four adult family members died in New Hampshire. “While the investigation remains active and ongoing, at this time, investigators believe the victims died as a result of carbon monoxide poisoning,” said New Hampshire State Fire Marshal Sean Toomey. Part of that investigation involves examining the home’s gas heating system ...

More help needed in homeless battle

“No American should face homelessness,” reads the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s news release accompanying the January 2024 Point-In-Time Count Report. Yes, the data is a year old, but each year’s snapshot gives us a better understanding of how many in our communities are facing just that. During the look at the number of individuals in shelters, temporary housing and unsheltered settings, researchers found more than 770,000 people were experiencing homelessness on that one night in January. That was an 18 percent increase from the same point-in-time in ...