News

White House action guide to address rural drug addiction

The White House has released a new guide to help rural communities combat drug addiction. The Office of National Drug Control Policy launched the Rural Community Action Guide on Friday.

Anne Hazlett is the White House Senior Advisor for Rural Affairs.   

“This tool is really designed to help educate local leaders to better understand some of the issues and topics they might need to address if addiction is in their community and then some of the recommended action steps around each of those topics,” she says.

She says some of the topics in the guide include…”Stigma, how to use data in evaluating what’s going on in your community, and how we can access medical care through broadband availability,” she says.

Hazlett says drugs have had a significant impact on rural communities.

“There was just a survey that was released in January that interviewed 2,700 people living in rural areas and they found that for many of those people that drugs are now of equal concern to rural Americans as the economy,” she says.

The guide, that can be found on the USDA website, complements two existing guides that address funding and data surrounding drug addition in rural communities.