Community event at church addresses health needs in Frankfort

A variety of health-focused vendors set up tables in the parking lot of First Baptist Church Frankfort on June 14 to share information and host activities with attendees. (UK photos by Lindsay Travis)

By Lindsay Travis
University of Kentucky

Coretta Scott King said, “The greatness of a community is most accurately measured by the compassionate actions of its members.”

On a warm Saturday in June, First Baptist Church Frankfort opened its doors to more than 500 individuals in the community to put an emphasis on their well-being. It was part of the fourth annual Dr. Rosby L. Glover Unity in the Community event — a day of fun, food, music and raising awareness.

The fruits of this effort are an extension of collaborations with key community partners, including Capital City Activity Center, Meals on Wheels Greater Frankfort, Kentucky State University Cooperative Extension and the University of Kentucky.

“The day is an effort to bring the whole community together, to not only just have fellowship, but to bring awareness to physical health, diabetes and other health issues,” said Bishop Tiangello Hill, senior pastor of the church. “It means that we're doing our job. It means that we are reaching beyond the four walls and being a help to all mankind.”

The event is held in honor of the church’s late pastor, the Rev. Dr. Rosby L. Glover, who made it his mission to be an advocate for the Frankfort community for children and families. His widow, Lady Kimberly Glover, said “This was a vision of ours, and I’m elated to see Frankfort continue my husband’s mission to serve the community and its families.”

The compassion for Frankfort is evident in talking to those behind the June 14 event, like Glover.

“People care about this event because when people get together, we're all just people,” she said. “No matter what race, what nationality, it’s bringing love for one another, showing how much we care. And just to know that the church is here to help anyone in need.”

In an effort to share important health information with the community, inside the church, guests could complete free health screenings. The Lions Club partnered for diabetes screenings and the Franklin County Health Department donated screening materials and time for blood pressure screenings.

UK's Refocus Project, aimed at African Americans, answered
questions about opioid overdoses. (UK Photo by Lindsay Travis)

Tents and tables lined the church parking lot and nearby Clinton Street showcasing the services provided by a variety of health-focused agencies. Among those tables were UK’s Sanders-Brown Center on Aging and its Engaged Aging Lab, the College of Health Sciences’ Physical Therapy program, the Research Examining Factors Associated with the Opioid Crisis among Underserved African Americans (REFOCUS) research team, and the Cooperative Extension Service.

It’s an intentional approach from researchers and clinicians at UK to address the specific needs of the Frankfort community. The city, at one time, had the nation’s second-highest prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease in African American adults among other health challenges.

The partnership is an important one to Elizabeth Rhodus, assistant professor at Sanders-Brown and the Department of Behavioral Science in the UK College of Medicine.

“We connected with Dr. Glover a few years ago to think about how we can help provide health care, access and resources to individuals in the community,” said Rhodus. “We are excited to see that partnership grow.”

Saturday’s event is an extension of Sanders-Brown’s partnership with First Baptist Church Frankfort. Researchers meet monthly with church members to help address the commumity's needs. It’s part of Rhodus’ Engaged Aging Lab, which takes lessons learned from research and clinical spaces out into the communities to address health gaps.

Rhodus and her team provide support and resources for Alzheimer’s disease and dementia through research which focuses on everyday activities that support healthy brain aging, caring for individuals with dementia and community-engaged research for health equity. They use practical methods and everyday items in ways to help people live healthy and reduce their risks for diseases.

“We focus on telling people about five main areas to try to reduce your risk for dementia: sleep, nutrition, exercise, novelty — or doing something new — and socializing, are the great things for your brain,” said Celeste Roberts, research program manager at the Engaged Aging Lab.

Oil timers can relax the mind and body through visual cues.

Roberts kept a bottle of lavender-scented lotion and an oil timer on the table. The items may be simple, but as Roberts explains, they can relax the mind and body through aromatherapy and visual cues.

She and Sanders-Brown’s April Stauffer answered questions from people stopping at their tables for hours. They handed out helpful flyers on a range of topics related to brain health.

“Having a conversation with people about what they can do every day on their own and giving them the tools they need to ask the right questions about their health is key,” said Roberts. “Unity in the Community gives us an opportunity to start that conversation.”

On Clinton Street in downtown Frankfort, physical therapy students looked like they were playing games with attendees who stopped by their table. In actuality, they were conducting fall risk and balance assessments they’d use in clinic — a four-square step test and a timed up-and-go test out of a chair.

“Depending on how they score we can tell them if they’re at an increased risk for falls or not and provide them with helpful information,” said Sheila Clemens, an assistant professor in the Department of Physical Therapy. “This community is potentially at risk for being underserved and they may not get this information elsewhere. We’re happy to offer this easy access.”

In the next booth, the focus was on engaging members of the Black community in research. It’s part of the REFOCUS project, led by Danelle Stevens-Watkins, acting dean and professor in the Department of Educational, School and Counseling Psychology in the College of Education.

“We came to this event to help educate the community about opioid overdoses,” said Mona Goggins, a research assistant with REFOCUS. While the number of overdose deaths in Kentucky declined 9.8% frpom 2022 to 2023, there was an 8% rise in overdose deaths among Black Kentuckians. “Our hope is people want to participate in our study so we can increase awareness and gather information that will improve treatment in the Black community.”

The project is primarily focused on Lexington and Louisville, but the REFOCUS representatives shared that guests were “getting what they needed from the table” from education to sharing stories to seeing themselves represented in research efforts.

“I think that when you try to look at treatment from just one lens, you miss out on so many different groups in the population. I think it's important to recognize what different cultural backgrounds and factors that influence people's lives in the way that they experience opioid use,” said De’Asia Beard, a REFOCUS mresearch assistant.

UK’s Cooperative Extension Service has been a long-time partner in this community initiative. Sanders-Brown works closely with Carla Carter, an extension agent for family and consumer sciences at the Franklin County Extension Office.

Carter, a long-time member of First Baptist Church Frankfort, helps coordinate monthly workshops at the church and was the emcee for the Dr. Rosby L. Glover Unity in the Community. She thanked Debora Bobbitt and Reverend Anna Jones for organizing the day.

The event took a holistic approach to community health, with pieces focused on the spectrum of age ranges represented. In addition to health screenings for older age groups, the church donated 65 bicycles to kids in the community — doubling their previous giveaway goal — to foster health and exercise.

It took a team of people to put on the event and a strong spirit of collaboration from the team at the church to make such an impact in the capital city.

Rhodus and her team know there’s a health need in this area that can benefit from targeted resources and outreach paired with different research approaches. The team shares a similar goal with First Baptist Church Frankfort:

“Let’s literally build unity within all of these communities to support every individual, wherever they’re at in their aging journey — childhood all the way throughout their older age,” said Rhodus. “Let’s tailor the health pieces that they need to support a healthy, active lifestyle.”

Where to find more information:

• Sanders-Brown offers a variety of resources for people with questions about brain health. You can get started online here.
• The Engaged Aging Lab is ready to help caregivers and community members. You can find those resources online here.
• Anyone with questions about the study REFOCUS and opioid use in the Black community can email REFOCUS@uky.edu.
• UK’s physical therapy program also offers clinics for the public. More information is available online here.
• The Cooperative Extension Service provides practical education to help people, businesses and communities solve problems, develop skills and build a better future. Find more about their services online here.
• The Kentucky State University Cooperative Extension Program strengthens underserved communities, families, farmers, individuals and youth to improve their quality of life with state-of-the-art, research-based educational programs. You can learn more about their services online here.

Letcher County backs off its plan to spend $125,000 in opioid-settlement money on an experimental therapy by Isaiah House

The Bridge device, which requires a prescription,  "sends

gentle electrical impulses . . . to the brain to reduce

withdrawal symptoms," its website says. (Photo from site)

By Sam Adams

The Mountain Eagle

The Letcher County Fiscal Court has reversed itself — at least for now — on whether it will give $125,000 of its opioid settlement money to a Christian-based drug-rehab center for an experimental electrical-stimulation therapy.

The court voted 4 to 1 with one abstention to table the contract with Isaiah House, a Willisburg-based nonprofit, until County Attorney Jamie Hatton can negotiate it. Hatton said the contract, brought to the court by jail minister Ted Adams of Letcher, does not allow the county to back out in case the treatment doesn’t work. “There’s nothing in there about termination for cause,” Hatton said.

Three of the five magistrates who had voted to give the money for the treatment expressed reservations this week, echoing Hatton that the contract needs to be negotiated, and saying the treatment is unproven, and at $5,000 per patient would allow only 25 patients to participate.

Adams was livid that the court did not approve the contract, saying the court voted to give the money before the NSS-2 Bridge device was approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration, and now wants to back out after it has been approved. “ It doesn’t make any sense,” he said.

The device, marketed by Innovative Health Solutions Inc. of Versailles, Ind., was approved under an FDA program called “the de novo premarket review,” which the FDA describes as “a regulatory pathway for some low- to moderate-risk devices that are novel and for which there is no legally marketed predicate device to which the device can claim substantial equivalence.”

Devices approved under that program are assessed to be low- to moderate-risk to patients, but it does not include an assessment of whether the devices have a therapeutic effect. A test included only 73 patients, 64 of whom self-reported decreased distress during opioid withdrawal after getting the device. Critics say the device has not undergone a randomized test to account for a placebo effect. While the company charges $600 per device, Isaiah House is asking the county for $5,000 per patient.

Adams said he could “bring in all the churches” where people have seen results of the device, but some magistrates said they would prefer that he brought in someone from Isaiah House and people who have used the device.

“The only thing is, I would like to talk to some people it helped,” District 5 Magistrate Benny McCall said. “I have talked to some people who said it didn’t do much for them, but I’d like to talk to some who say it has.”

District 1 Magistrate Jack Banks also questioned whether the device is worth the money the court would have to pay, saying it would only possibly help 25 people and that’s not guaranteed. Adams, however, criticized other programs the county has agreed to help fund, including the Harm Reduction Program run by the Kentucky River District Health Department. He said the court gave $50,000 to “buy needles for people to kill themselves.”

District 3 Magistrate Deb Collier responded, saying the needle exchange can’t be criticized because it prevents people who are addicted to drugs from passing deadly diseases such as AIDS and hepatitis to others by sharing needles.

Judge/Executive Terry Adams suggested the county wait to see how other patients in other counties that have agreed pay Isaiah House have progressed, but Ted Adams stopped him. “How many people are going to have die?” he said.

That also drew a response from Collier and from Banks, who said the court is watched about how it spends the opioid money and has a responsibility to spend it well. Banks said people are watching, and “if we spend $125,000 on this and it doesn’t work, how does that look on us?”

“How does it look to give $125,000 to CANE Kitchen?” Ted Adams asked.

Banks said CANE Kitchen is part of a rehab program that helps people get back to work, but Adams said that’s part of his ministry, too.

Collier, McCall, Banks, and Judge Adams voted to table the issue until Hatton can negotiate. Ted Adams left immediately when the vote was taken.

Southern Baptist Convention opposes in vitro fertilization, passing resolution offered by head of denomination's Louisville seminary

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President
Albert Mohler spoke in a YouTube video on May 23.

UPDATE, June 15: For a New York Times story on how the resolution was developed, and its political ramifications, click here.

Kentucky Health News

The Southern Baptist Convention voted Wednesday to oppose the use of in vitro fertilization, in which many human embryos are created outside the body but only one or a few are implanted in the uterus.

The resolution, adopted at the denomination's annual meeting in Indianapolis, was offered by R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Andrew T. Walker, an associate professor of Christian ethics and public theology at the Louisville school.

The two "acknowledged that the issue is divisive even among strongly anti-abortion Christians, and that Republicans have leaped to preserve access to fertility treatments," reports Ruth Graham of The New York Times. She quoted from an interview in which Mohler said: “I want to do more than nudge Republicans who are against us on this. I want to call them out for their error and inconsistency.” He said IVF as commonly practiced is “as immoral as anything we can imagine if we state the proposition clearly, but a lot of evangelicals don’t want to state the proposition clearly.”

Mohler told Politico that he is “very frustrated” with Republicans who favor legislation protecting IVF: “A lot of them are responding out of political expediency, not out of moral principle. You can’t say on one hand life begins at fertilization and then on the other hand say but now we’re not so concerned about that in this other arena.”

 

After the Alabama Supreme Court outlawed IVF this year, Republican politicians there and in other GOP-controlled states scrambled to protect the process. A bill to protect IVF in Kentucky got no hearing, and state law on the topic is unclear. Action by Congress is unlikely because 60 votes woudl be needed to pass such legislation through the Senate.

The Southern Baptist Convention is Kentucky's largest religious denomination. As of 2021, 1.2 percent of births in Kentucky involved the use of assisted reproductive technologies, mainly IVF; the U.S. rate was 2.3%.

The resolution is not binding on any church or member. It asks Southern Baptists “to reaffirm the unconditional value and right to life of every human being, including those in an embryonic stage, and to only utilize reproductive technologies consistent with that affirmation, especially in the number of embryos generated in the IVF process.”

The resolution also urges Southern Baptists to “advocate for the government to restrain” actions inconsistent with the dignity of “every human being, which necessarily includes frozen embryonic human beings.” In other words, unusued embryos should be frozen, not destroyed.

"Although the process . . . often results in the destruction of unused embryos, many Southern Baptists see that as fundamentally different from abortion because the goal of fertility treatments is to create new life," Graham reports. Convention messengers, or delegates, "heard several emotional testimonies, some from Baptists who hoped to soften the language of the resolution."

Megan Messerly of Politico reports, "As evangelicals become more educated on the issue, they are largely falling into two camps: those who believe that IVF can be practiced ethically if no embryos are destroyed, and those who like Mohler and Walker believe IVF is inherently unethical because it separates conception from the act of sex between husband and wife. Walker, acknowledging the former view, noted the resolution was 'drafted to pass.' A last-minute amendment sought to make clear that IVF is permissible in some circumstances, but failed."

Vote counts were not announced, but a convention spokesman told The Wall Street Journal that the resolution passed overwhelmingly.

At a Monday luncheon "hosted by a new conservative Christian advocacy group with Southern Baptist ties, Mohler compared the nascent evangelical conversation around in vitro fertilization to the years after the Roe v. Wade decision, when Catholics led the anti-abortion movement and evangelicals were less attuned to the issue," Graham reports, quoting him: “We had to learn after 1973 as evangelicals. We had to learn how to get this issue right.”

The Southern Baptist Convention did not declare its opposition to abortion until several years after the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, which overturned itself in 2022 in a case styled Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.

Dr. Wendell Kingsolver, a doctor for more than half a century and an advocate for family medicine and rural health, dies at 96

Wendell Kingsolver, M.D.

Dr. Wendell Roy Kingsolver, a longtime physician and advocate for family medicine and public health, especially in rural Kentucky, died Thursday, May 30. He was 96 and lived in Nicholasville.

After graduation from the University of Kentucky and an internship and residency, Kingsolver set up a family practice at Carlisle in his home Nicholas County. He was one of the few physicians in the area and served patients of all ages at all hours in emergency, operating, and delivery rooms, He was among the first physicians certified by the American Board of Family Practice, and trained UK medical students in rural family practice as they lived in his home and learned what a diverse rural medical career was like. In the 1960s he was a medical volunteer in the Republic of Congo, and later on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia and the Newfoundland coast town of St. Anthony. After retiring from five decades of full-time private practice, he was a public-health doctor for the Wedco District Health Department in in Nicholas, Harrison, Bourbon and Scott counties.

Kingsolver was an early adopter of organic farming, and he and his first wife Virginia were founding members of the Sierra Club chapter in Kentucky, the group that built Lake Carnico in Nicholas County, and the First Christian Church in Carlisle, where he was an elder and sang in the choir. He was a board member of the Cane Ridge Meeting House, where the Disciples of Christ denomination began. He enjoyed birdwatching and served a term as president of the Kentucky Ornithological Society. He and Ginny, who predeceased him, established a KOS scholarship for young people interested in the study of birds, and worked to preserve natural land in Nicholas County, some of it donated to the Blue Licks Battlefield State Resort Park.

Kingsolver's survivors include his wife, Eva Lee (Lynam Kanatzar) Kingsolver; son Robert (Paula) Kingsolver; daughter and noted author Barbara Kingsolver (Steven Hopp); and Ann Kingsolver, former director of the Appalachian Center at UK. A viewing will be held Tuesday, June 4, at 2 p.m., followed by the funeral at 4 p.m., at Milward Funeral Home, 391 Southland Drive in Lexington.

Information for this article was taken from the obituary.

Election prompts a look at Beshear's pandemic restrictions, and Cameron's challenges to them; Kentucky fared better than feared

Gov. Andy Beshear, right, and Dr. Steven Stack, the state’s public-health commissioner, at a news conference in the governor's Capitol suite in May 2020. (Photo by Sarah Ladd, Kentucky Lantern)

By Sarah Ladd
Kentucky Lantern
     
On March 6, 2020, a Kentuckian tested positive for the novel coronavirus, Covid-19, and Gov. Andy Beshear declared a state of emergency.

The United States had been under a public health emergency for more than a month by then. Five days after Kentucky’s first confirmed case, the World Health Organization said COVID-19 was officially a pandemic.

The NCAA canceled March Madness rather than “contribute to spread” of the virus. The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art shuttered temporarily. NASCAR suspended racing.

We had entered a time like nothing Americans had experienced since the flu epidemic of 1918. In other words, it was “uncharted territory,” said Dr. Paul McKinney, the University of Louisville’s interim dean of the School of Public Health and Information Sciences, in a September interview with the Kentucky Lantern.

Over the next three years, around 2 million Covid-19 tests came back positive in Kentucky. More than 19,000 Kentuckians died.

Beshear issued more orders, including restricting mass gatherings, closing schools and releasing some medically at-risk prisoners.

Now some Republicans are urging Kentuckians to make Beshear a one-term governor based on his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Andy Beshear has failed us,” says an ad by Republican nominee and Attorney General Daniel Cameron. “He locked our schools and unlocked our jails. We can do better.”

A pro-Cameron PAC is running ads accusing a “criminal coddling governor” of having unleashed dangerous criminals on Kentuckians.

To help voters navigate the criticisms, the Lantern is looking back at the pandemic, a time of economic upheaval, rapidly changing guidance and rampant misinformation.

‘Flying blind’

At the beginning, the response to Covid-19 was “a blunt instrument,” said UofL’s McKinney, “because what could we do at that point? We had no antiviral medications to use, we didn’t have a vaccine. We didn’t have adequate testing; we didn’t have enough (personal protective equipment) to go around. All we had was basically the ability to trace contacts of people who were exposed and to … implement social distancing.”

Tim Veno, CEO of an organization of nursing homes and assisted living facilities in Kentucky, agreed.

“We were pretty well flying blind,” he said. “We had no test or any way to determine who may or may not have had Covid.”

Until the science caught up, social mitigation was the only option.

In March 2020, Beshear, who had been governor three months, issued a variety of recommendations and orders based on guidance from public-health authorities, meant to slow the virus’ spread.

Almost as quickly, Attorney General Cameron began challenging some of the orders in court.

Not all of Beshear’s orders were restrictive. He streamlined the process for out-of-state nurses to work in Kentucky, suspended evictions and expanded eligibility for unemployment benefits.

The unemployment system was quickly overwhelmed by the influx of applications, and people waited months for help. Meanwhile, Louisville’s WDRB reported that Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman texted the head of the Office of Unemployment Insurance to get attention to her hairdresser’s application, as well as that of a “friend of a friend.” The administration maintained that there was no abuse of power.

Beshear also began holding daily, virtual news conferences, broadcast across the state, to share information about the virus. Health experts praised this move, but it rankled some of his political opponents.

And, he encouraged Kentuckians to light their homes green in memory of those lost to Covid-19.

Spring 2020: A ‘somber’ experience

When Beshear recommended that schools close for a few weeks, Louisville high-school freshman Spandana Pavuluri, now 18, remembers thinking the time would be “just like an extended spring break.” Two weeks to catch up on homework, nothing more.

Before the end of March, though, the virus closed all public-school buildings in the U.S., according to Education Week.

The extended remote learning and loss of social connections in a pivotal time of her life “hit me like a truck,” Pavuluri said, describing the time as “somber.”

Her bedroom, where she did school, became a “place of … stress,” not relaxation. The “really social person” was suddenly very alone, a sentiment reflected back to her from other students in research she helped conduct with the Kentucky Student Voice Team.

On top of school closures, in April 2020, Beshear halted elective surgeries so medical staff and supplies could be fully employed in addressing Covid-19. He closed the Natural Bridge and Cumberland Falls state resort parks and suspended overnight stays at other resort parks.

When several individuals sued the state challenging Beshear’s restrictions on interstate travel, Cameron took their side in court. A federal judge in a different case ruled that parts of the travel order were unconstitutional. Beshear lifted it before Memorial Day.

The state shut down visits to nursing homes except in end-of-life situations. Leaders feared that visitors would bring Covid-19 to the most vulnerable.

“That, of course, was devastating to some families,” said Veno, president and CEO of LeadingAge Kentucky.

“After that, we mobilized very quickly in setting up remote communication, iPads and other connected devices so that we could immediately, at least, at the very minimum, allow residents and families to talk via the internet,” Veno said. “Those were all very difficult decisions to make.”

Despite “some political blowback” from those moves, Veno said, “in my view, that action saved lives.”

 
On churches, did the governor go too far?

After Beshear banned gatherings of more than 10 people, and a religious revival in Hopkins County was linked to at least 28 cases of the virus and two deaths, some churches kept holding in-person services.

Maryville Baptist Church in Bullitt County gathered on Easter Sunday despite the order. The pastor found nails in the parking lot before the service. And attendees found notices placed by state troopers on their windshields telling them to quarantine.

The church and Tabernacle Baptist Church in Nicholasville sued Beshear. As attorney general, Cameron joined their lawsuits.

Two federal district judges ruled that Beshear’s ban on religious gatherings was unconstitutional and that the churches could hold in-person services while observing precautions against spreading the virus. But the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals disagreed, allowing the restriction on in-person services to stand. The appeals court did block Beshear’s ban on drive-in services.

By then Beshear had agreed to allow places of worship to gather. But many chose to wait. The Rev. Kent Gilbert, pastor of historic Union Church in Berea, told the Lexington Herald-Leader at the time, “No pastor wants to race back to church to do more funerals.”

Todd Gray, the executive director of the Kentucky Baptist Convention, told the Lantern that the denomination’s pastors and church leaders “made their own decisions” about protecting congregants. They “sought to be good citizens working in cooperation with recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and from Frankfort,” he said.

The theological belief that Christians must gather together also factored into some congregations coming back to in person services “as quickly as possible,” said Gray.

“While most Kentucky Baptist churches sought to cooperate with the governor’s recommendations as much as they could,” Gray said, “most, if not all, believed the governor went too far when he specifically targeted churches while some businesses such as liquor stores remained open.” Beshear's order did not mention churches.

Politicizing a pandemic

In May 2020, angered over the shutdowns, protesters opposed to Covid-19 restrictions hanged Beshear in effigy outside the state Capitol and marched to the governor’s mansion demanding he resign.

Attached to the effigy was a sign with the words “sic semper tyrannis,” Latin for “thus ever to tyrants,” the motto of Virginia, which John Wilkes Booth famously said after shooting President Abraham Lincoln.

Republicans and Democrats alike decried those actions. Secretary of State Michael Adams, a Republican, tweeted at the time that “The words of John Wilkes Booth have no place in the Party of Lincoln.”

There were other protests of the shutdowns and social-distancing and masking measures. Misinformation was rampant, including a claim that the pandemic itself was a hoax. The politicization of the pandemic made it harder for health care workers do their jobs, they said.

“It was extremely difficult for hospitals,” said Deborah Campbell, the vice president for clinical strategy and transformation at the Kentucky Hospital Association.

In early 2021, when vaccines became available, Kentucky gave first priority to health care workers and staff in long-term care and assisted-living facilities followed by those over 70, first responders, K-12 school personnel and child care workers.

Many, including some health care workers, refused vaccination against the virus. Once vaccines were mandated by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, those who refused the shots could no longer work in hospitals, Campbell said.

“It was terribly painful. It was painful for the staff, it was painful for the hospital leadership,” Campbell said,  but precautions did save lives. They also kept hospitals running better than if no mitigation measures had been in place.

Fewer sick people “means more staff were not sick and able to take care of patients in the hospital, which means they got better care, which means they did better,” she said.

Still, health-care workers often bore the brunt of people’s anger.

Some hospital visitors and even patients treated health care workers in a “demoralizing” way, said Campbell. They spit on and cursed them.

“People were threatened. Workplace violence increased in our hospitals, particularly around visitation, and any personal-freedom restrictions,” Campbell said. “Those visitation restrictions were heart-wrenching. But at some point … I think it was pretty clear it was the right thing to do.”

Veno said that in his 20 years working in health care, “I’ve never seen this kind of public reaction, anti-vaccination reaction as I saw with Covid.”

All of this helped feed burnout and exacerbated an already worsening medical workforce crisis.

 
On the economy

About 18% of Kentucky’s businesses had to close because of a government mandate during 2020, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s similar to the nationwide share of about 19%.

The state designated workers as “essential” and “nonessential” to determine which employers could stay open with more flexibility. Grocery workers, for example, were deemed essential. Jewelry and clothing stores were not.

The designations remain a sore spot for some. Cameron has said he wants to make Beshear “not essential” come Election Day.

The Kentucky Center for Economic Policy reported in May that the state lost 294,900 jobs in just the first two months of the pandemic. Businesses permanently closed left and right. Thousands across the country shuttered.

“In the three years since, Kentucky has experienced a remarkable recovery,” Kentucky Policy said. It reported Kentucky had 53,800 more jobs than before Covid-19 hit the state.

Cameron said in October that, had he been governor at the time, he would not have closed small businesses and health spaces like chiropractor’s offices. He criticized what he called “inconsistency” in Beshear’s decisions.

“There are a lot of small businesses right now that have not been able to recover,” Cameron said. “Several of them closed their doors for good.”

Prisons: a ‘public health failure’

Among other steps to stifle Covid-19’s spread, Beshear closed restaurants to in-person traffic, suspended out-of-state travel for state employees, and stopped prison visits.

Beshear commuted the sentences of 1,870 inmates who were medically vulnerable and who had not been convicted of violent or sexual offenses and were withing six months of their release date.

Cameron and his allies have criticized Beshear’s pre-release vetting. They’ve cited data from the Administrative Office of the Courts that shows about half of 1,700 commutation recipients were charged with another crime by July 2023.

The Courier Journal of Louisville and the Herald-Leader have reported, though, that many of those re-offenders would have been free to commit their alleged subsequent crimes because their original prison sentences would have expired by then anyway. Beshear says they were "the vast majority."

Prison Policy Initiative, a Massachusetts-based national nonprofit that researches criminalization in the United States, reported in April that Kentucky’s overall incarceration population decreased 13% from January 2020 to December 2021. The national average in that perios was 15%.

Wanda Bertram, a communications strategist with Prison Policy Initiative, says the real mistake by Kentucky and most states was not releasing more prisoners — despite warnings that prisons would become “hotbeds for coronavirus spread” and “endanger not just people who are inside and people who are working inside but also the entire community that surrounds the prison.”

Kentucky, like most states, continued to imprison people for technical violations of probation and parole, Bertram said. “We actually did prove that mass incarceration probably added at least half a million Covid cases nationwide in the summer of 2020 alone,” she said.

In 2021, Bertram's group gave states letter grades based on their treatment of incarcerated populations during the pandemic. Kentucky, along with many others, received an F.

“Beshear’s commutations of 1,800 incarcerated people is a bright spot in what, otherwise, I would consider to be a complete public health failure when it comes to protecting incarcerated people and the communities that surround prisons,” Bertram said.

Kentucky had the nation’s third highest rate of Covid infections and deaths among prisoners from March 2020 to June 2021, according to the Marshall Project, which collaborated with The Associated Press to keep track. The numbers are an undercount because inconsistent testing caused infections to go undiagnosed, especially early in the pandemic, according to the report.

During those 15 months, Kentucky prisons recorded 7,909 cases — 6,503 cases per 10,000 prisoners, lower than only Michigan and Arkansas — and 48 deaths, or 39 per 10,000, lower than only Nevada and New Mexico.

Eight state prison staff in Kentucky died of Covid-19, the Department of Corrections said earlier this month.

Learning loss

By the start of the 2020-21 academic year, four states had ordered schools to open in person, but in Kentucky most schools continued remote learning. In November, a deadly “third wave” struck and Beshear announced that public and private K-12 schools would close.

Danville Christian Academy and Cameron challenged the school closing order and won before U.S. District Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove. But the Sixth Circuit U.S Court of Appeals upheld Beshear’s order, saying it treated all schools, religious or otherwise, the same.

The appeals court took note of one of Beshear’s justifications: “Kentucky leads the nation in children living with relatives other than their parents — including grandparents and great-grandparents, who are especially vulnerable” to the virus. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case.

By early 2021, a year into the pandemic, most Kentucky schools had returned to in-person instruction.

Some research suggests school closures helped keep Covid-19 transmission lower than if the doors had stayed open, but children suffered from the disruption in their education.

Many children suffered learning loss during remote and hybrid classes in 2020 and 2021 across the country, according to a 2022 study at Harvard University’s Center for Education Policy Research.

In Kentucky, reading and math proficiency dropped during the pandemic when comparing 2018-19 assessments with 2021-22 data.

At the time of that October 2022 report, Education Commissioner Jason Glass said “The Covid-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on our students and our schools as they continue to recover from the interrupted learning that occurred over the past two years.”

Cameron has said that should he be elected governor, he will institute a “catch-up” plan with tutoring to bring kids up to speed.

Looking back at her high-school experience, Pavuluri, now a piublc-policy student at Vanderbilt University, says that despite the disruptions in her education, school closures and other restrictions were worth it.

Because her mother is a geriatrician who works with older adults, she felt more empathy toward people at higher risk. “That was always in my mind and Covid was something I feel like I took pretty seriously,” she said. “I didn’t necessarily have someone very … immunocompromised in my family. (But) I think I really … empathize with the students who do.”

“There was obviously … negatives to the experience,” she added, “but I think just the massive negative would have been to … lose someone.”

In 2021, Harvard Medical School researchers found that while most children who contracted Covid-19 were only mildly symptomatic or had no symptoms at all, they could still carry the virus on to others. 

How did Kentucky compare to other states?

Kentucky is famously one of the sickest states — ranked third most unhealthy by Becker’s Hospital Review in January ahead of only West Virginia and Mississippi.

“Everyone had a reason to expect that we would be absolutely devastated” by Covid, said UofL’s McKinney.

Kentuckians suffer high rates of heart disease, diabetes and cancer. And the state’s population is shifting older. All these factors mean a lot of Kentuckians went into the pandemic with at least one “comorbidity” — a pre-existing condition putting them at higher risk for Covid-19 complications and death.

“Among our neighbor states, we were much more vulnerable than almost all of them,” said McKinney.

And yet CDC mortality data, which only includes 2020 and 2021, shows Kentucky’s death rate was lower than Tennessee’s and West Virginia’s, and higher than those of Indiana, Ohio and Virginia.

McKinney credits measures “implemented by the leadership and state” for saving Kentucky lives.

A study published in April in the international medical journal The Lancet took into account age and health when comparing states. and found that Kentucky’s death rate was lower than the national average.

Kentucky’s unadjusted Covid-19 death rate from January 2020 through July 2022 was 472 deaths for every 100,000 residents, higher than the national average. After adjusting for age and comorbidities, the rate was 341 deaths per 100,000 population, lower than the national rate of 372.

The state with the lowest adjusted death rate was Hawaii (147 per 100,000 residents). The highest was Arizona (581 per 100,000).

In April 2020, professors in the University of Kentucky's Gatton College of Business and Economics released research estimating that the state would have been much worse off without social-distancing measures early in the pandemic.

UK did not make those researchers available to the Lantern for this story. At the time, they estimated Kentucky would have had 45,000 Covid-19 cases by April 25, 2020, had the state not closed communal businesses like gyms and restaurants. Instead, the state had around 4,000.

The researchers also estimated that, a month into the pandemic, those actions saved about 2,000 lives.

A more comprehensive study by The Royal Society in London examined the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions like social distancing and mask wearing during across the globe.

The August 2023 report found that social strategies like mask wearing and physical distancing helped reduce virus spread. However, scientists found that this was most true when powerful variants like Delta and Omicron, which were particularly good at evading protective barriers, weren’t spreading.

McKinney asked, “Could they have … relaxed restrictions more rapidly? Could they have … let us get to a normal life faster? That’s a tough call. You have to play it a little bit by ear. And, again, you’re trying to probably err on the side of protection of human life.”

He added, “Everything’s clearer in hindsight. . . . I think that the leadership of both the commissioner of public health and the governor, who worked closely together in implementing policy, the primary concern was preservation of lives.

“Freedom of the population is very important. But if you’re dead, you can’t be free. So if you preserve life first, and then . . . worry about how tight the controls have to be later. I think that was the general plan: to be as tight as possible to hopefully stop the progress of the virus.” 

Lessons for the future

Kentucky’s response to Covid-19 wasn’t perfect, experts say, and there is much the state can learn from it for the future.

For example, Kentucky needs more vigorous respiratory-virus surveillance, automated data reporting and well-maintained stockpiles of personal protective equipment.

The ability to produce vaccines quickly will ease government reliance on social mitigation measures as well, McKinney said.

Kentucky — and the nation — will need to guard against complacency, McKinney said. Although “hopefully” there won’t be another pandemic in the near future, “there’s no guarantee.”

Kentucky also must rebuild its health-care workforce. The pandemic “taxed” health care workers “beyond belief,” said Veno, with LeadingAge. And the staffing challenges this caused continue.

Pavuluri said leaders must keep in mind that students need social connections, mentorship and relationships. Many lacked that during NTI learning and will need it for the next public health crisis, she said.

And, even though the emergency years of the Covid-19 have ended, “staffing remains a huge problem,” said Campbell, with the state hospital association.

“We are incredibly concerned as hospitals and the hospital association about trying to increase the pipeline and retain the staff that we have,” she said.

Before the pandemic hit, she said, there was already a concerning trajectory of an aging nursing workforce. “Then we had Covid, which caused burnout.”

Looking to the future, climate change is a concern.

“Warming of the climate will affect … a lot of disease transmission,” McKinney said. “If winter weather that wipes out the mosquito population every year did not do so, and they survived and thrived and carried something like malaria … throughout that time, it would be … a big concern, obviously, for the nation.”

Covid-19 is shifting more into an annual flu-like nuisance, public health experts have said. People will still get sick, but the science is there to manage large waves.

For now, many facilities are still using universal precautions–like wearing personal protective equipment–during outbreaks. They also use screening tools to keep the spread low.

“Make no mistake about it,” said Veno, of LeadingAge. “We’re still dealing with Covid, and we’re going to be dealing with Covid for quite some time.”

Jamie Lucke and McKenna Horsley contributed to this story.

Pandemic state of emergency would end March 7 under a resolution the state Senate sent to the House on a party-line vote

Sen. Donald Douglas (Legislative photo) 

By Melissa Patrick
Kentucky Health News

The Senate has sent the House a resolution to end the Covid-19 state of emergency in Kentucky on March 7.

Senate Joint Resolution 150, sponsored by Republican Sen. Donald Douglas of Nicholasville, would end the state of emergency that Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear declared on March 6, 2020. In January, the legislature set it to expire on April 15. 

The resolution would end "all subsequent executive orders, emergency administrative regulations, suspensions of statutes, and other directives which rely upon the declaration of emergency."  

And it says the governor "shall not" declare a new Covid-19 state of emergency "based upon the same or substantially similar facts and circumstances as the original declaration" without the prior approval of the General Assembly. 

The resolution passed the Senate Thursday, Feb. 24. on a party-line vote of 28-8. Including Douglas, the resolution has 18 sponsors. 

While presenting the bill on the Senate floor, Daniels acknowledged that when the virus was first announced, there were many unknowns that drove decision-making, but he said it quickly turned political. 

"Instead of proceeding down a purely medical path, it seems that politics took a major role and  sometimes even the lead," said Douglas, a physician. "The emergency seemed to be more about emotion and feeling and a lot less about objectivity and facts."  

He said the focus has been on cases and deaths, without an understanding that "many more people recovered without issue," causing our citizens to be "terrified." As of Feb. 25, there have been 1.3 million Covid-19 cases in Kentucky and 13,758 deaths attributed to it, most in people over 60. However, as many as a third of people with Covid-19 have reported lingering effects.

Douglas noted that the state of emergency led to cancellation of elective medical procedures, business shutdowns, loss of jobs, mask mandates and travel restrictions, and said "the Kentucky State Police were directed to target church attendees."

When Douglas presented the bill in committee, he said Beshear ordered police "to pull the attendees of the church out of the church.” That is not true. Beshear ordered police to go to parking lots of churches that held in-person services on Easter 2020 and place notice on cars saying that attendees were in violation of his order against mass gatherings and should quarantine themselves for 14 days.

Douglass also cited a Johns Hopkins University meta-analysis of 24 studies that looked at the effects of lockdowns on Covid-19 deaths. The researchers found lockdowns in the U.S. and Europe reduced Covid-19 mortality by an average of 0.2 percent; that shelter-in-place orders reduced mortality by 2.9%; and that there was no broad-based evidence of noticeable effects from non-pharmaceutical interventions. 

The study concluded, "While this meta-analysis concludes that lockdowns have had little to no public-health effects, they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted. In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument."

Douglas said, "It is time to move to normalcy." He said the March 7 date would give Beshear time to file any administrative regulations that are needed and ensure that the lawmakers are still in session when the emergency ends.

He added that it is not his intent to decrease or interfere with any federal funding, but Sen. Morgan McGarvey, D-Louisville, said it remains unknown if the resolution would affect federal funding such as the additional nutrition benefits that have been made available to children and families.

Sen. Karen Berg, D-Louisville, also spoke against the resolution, saying it is premature because the percentage of Kentuckians testing positive for the virus remains too high and only 60% of eligible Kentuckians have received even a single dose of a Covid-19 vaccine.

When Berg spoke, the positive-test rate was around 10%, after being above 30% for much of January. Early in the pandemic, public-health officials said caution is required when the rate is above 5%. 

Vaccination rates are also slowing. Over the last seven days, the average number of Covid-19 vaccinations in Kentucky was 2,508 per day, the lowest since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began gathering reliable data in January 2020. Most of the shots were boosters. State and CDC data show that 64% of the total population have received at least one dose of a vaccine, 56% are fully vaccinated and 43% of the eligible population is boosted.

Sen. David Yates, D-Louisville, asked his colleagues, “Why are we doing it? This doesn’t change anything. . . . I actually cannot wait until I can join in support of it, but what is the rush? I vote no.”

Gov. Andy Beshear said on Feb. 21, "We don't have any state restrictions left . . . and we haven't in a long time."

Douglas, who won a special election in November, is running in the May 17 primary election against Andrew Cooperrider of Lexington, who flouted Beshear's restrictions and led protests against them.

UK researcher who pioneered faith-based project to tackle cervical cancer has expanded her work to the national level

By Alicia Gregory and Ben Corwin

University of Kentucky

The best solutions begin when you listen to the people whose problems you’re trying to solve. That community-based focus — the crux of what Nancy Schoenberg says is her approach as a medical anthropologist — has been a guiding value through her 25 years at the University of Kentucky.

“We are not the experts. The experts are the people we are talking to, so we need to listen to people," said Schoenberg, UK's Marion Pearsall Professor of Behavioral Science. "We need to honor that what they say is important in their lives, and why they do and don't do things. And once we do that, then we can work with them to come up with evidence-based solutions.

“As an anthropologist in the College of Medicine, initially, I think a lot of people did not exactly understand what kind of work I was doing. But when evidence starts to emerge, when I start to get more and more funding, when I start to disseminate my work, start to train students, people start to understand what translational science is — taking existing interventions and making sure they work in a community setting.

“For generations, there has been a tendency on the part of outsiders to pathologize Appalachia,” Schoenberg said. “Too often, even those with good intentions tend to see the region as nothing other than a complex of problems. What typically gets left out of the picture are the tremendous assets the region possesses.”

Chief among those assets is a strong sense of shared cultural identity and community, Schoenberg says. It led to the creation of “Faith Moves Mountains,” a faith-based outreach program that has tackled cervical cancer screening, diabetes treatment and prevention, smoking cessation, and healthy eating and physical activity in Appalachian communities, through churches, since 2004.

“It’s an approach that has been employed extensively and with great success in African-American communities,” Schoenberg said. “But there wasn’t much data out there on faith-based interventions in predominantly white, rural populations. Faith Moves Mountains changed that.”

Since 2009, Schoenberg has served as principal investigator on more than $10.8 million in sponsored grants and contracts. She currently leads a mobile-health research project, based on an intervention designed at Northwestern University, that targets healthy lifestyle choices.

“To our knowledge it’s the first randomized control trial of an mHealth technology-oriented intervention in Appalachian Kentucky," she said. "And our goal for that project is to try to increase fruit and vegetable intake, to increase physical activity, and to decrease screen time. We know that using technology may be a really good substitute for what’s not available in their local communities.”

The impact of her work and the recognition of its importance is evidenced by Schoenberg’s many collaborators at UK. “People’s doors are open. And that is a hallmark of UK, is our sense of collaboration, our sense of mission, our responsibility, and respect for the land grant,” she said.

In 2021, Schoenberg and Mark Dignan, a professor in the College of Medicine’s Department of Internal Medicine, received $764,000 from the National Cancer Institute for a project called Addressing Rural Cancer Inequities through Scientific Excellence (ARISE) to train 10 postdoctoral researchers to address cancer-related health disparities in Appalachian Kentucky.

Schoenberg’s goal to train a diverse future workforce of clinicians and scientists is evidenced in her many roles: director of the Center for Health Equity Transformation (established in 2018 to enhance innovative, transdisciplinary and impactful research and training to improve the health of vulnerable Kentucky residents), co-developer and director of the Research Scholars Program (established in 2021 to ensure diversity and inclusion in research by promoting faculty success), associate vice president for research in research professional development, and associate director at the Center for Clinical and Translational Sciences.

“Studies have shown, time and time again, that the most creative, most impactful, most frequently cited publications are those from diverse research teams," she said. "So one trend that I am very encouraged by, but recognize we need to go a lot further, is making sure that all people are at the table — people from all backgrounds, all walks of life. Because we need their talent, and we need their input, and it just improves our science tremendously.”

Schoenberg recently accepted an invitation to serve on the leadership team of the Rural Policy Research Institute, an organization that provides nonpartisan, research-based analysis on needs and opportunities facing rural communities to help policymakers understand the rural impacts of public policies. In the past three months, she has given three national talks at the National Institutes of Health, the University of Iowa and, upcoming, at Washington University in St. Louis.

“It’s an honor for me to be able to represent UK nationally,” Schoenberg said. “And it’s gratifying to see our work in communities making an impact inside and outside of the commonwealth.”

Churches could be key to overcoming vaccine misinformation, resistance to perceived coercion by 'The Man' in Eastern Ky.

Pastor Billy Joe Lewis at his Leslie County church. (Kaiser Health News photo by Jessica Tezak)

The key to keeping Eastern Kentucky hospitals from being overwhelmed by Covid-19, the flu and other illnesses this winter may depend on rural churches helping vaccination campaigns, Sarah Varney reports for Kaiser Health News.

"In Leslie County, in the foothills of the rugged Pine Mountain ridge that anchors the state's eastern coalfield, gravel roads wind through thick forests blanketed with kudzu vines," Varney writes. "House by house, church by church, public health workers are trying to outsmart the fantastical tales spread on Facebook about the Covid-19 vaccines, while also helping residents overcome the everyday hurdles of financial hardship and isolation."

Leslie County has better full-vaccination rates than most counties in southeastern Kentucky: 46% of the population and 54% of the vaccine-eligible (12 and older). Clay County, to the east, has only 39% and 45%, respectively, despite special campaigns to get shots in arms. The region matches what national polls show tend to be the most adamant anti-vaccine part of the U.S. population, citing "tends to be disproportionately white, rural, evangelical Christian and politically conservative," The New York Times reports.

"Local health agencies have been eager to enroll churches in the all-hands-on-deck vaccination effort," Varney reports. "Some church leaders have refrained from encouraging vaccination, afraid of offending congregants in a state where mistrust of government intrusion runs deep."

But not Billy Joe Lewis, pastor of the Full Gospel Church of Jesus Christ on Cutshin Creek, which rises in the shadow of Pine Mountain and drains much of Leslie County.

"Lewis, who has thick silver hair and a luminous smile, spends long stretches of the day in prayer, and he says God told him to protect his flock," Varney reports. "When 'Sister Maxine' from the regional health department suggested a drop-in vaccine clinic in the church parking lot, Lewis says, he was all in favor. He promoted it from the pulpit and on the church's must-read Facebook page."

Lewis's sister in Christ is Maxine Shepherd, a regional health coordinator for the county and a member of his church since he started it in 1972. But his stand wasn't a personal favor. "We've still got to use common sense," he told Varney. "Anything that can ward off suffering and death, I think, is a wonderful thing."

He has seen both. "In recent weeks, Lewis held a funeral service for a 53-year-old unvaccinated former coal miner, suspended Sunday services after more members fell ill and, with a heavy heart, canceled Homecoming — a cherished yearly gathering of area churches that marks the fall foliage with a celebration of the gospel and shared faith," Varney writes.

Varney notes that getting people to vaccine sites in the region isn't as easy as it is in most places, because some people lack transportation. But another big obstacle is "the specter of coercion" in a region "where government directives have been met with derision," she reports.

"We do not like to be shoved," Louisa nursing-home owner David McKenzie told her. "We resent it, and we shove back."

In Lawrence County, the fully-vaccinated rates are 40% of the total and 48% of the eligible. Opposition to the vaccines there "is not overtly political so much as defiant," Varney writes.

"They're fearful of 'The Man'," McKenzie told her. "The Man could be your employer, it could be the government, it could be a newspaper reporter."

And there's another kind of fear, Varney reports, paraphrasing and quoting McKenzie: "People who boasted about refusing the vaccines cannot change their minds, or 'They'll look like they're weak, or they caved to The Man'."

Reports of anti-vaccine preachers spur weekly newspaper to use its 'bully pulpit' and forswear 'neutrality in times of moral crisis'

Many Kentucky newspapers are making extra efforts to increase vaccination against the coronavirus, by fighting misinformation with the facts, and Kentucky Health News plans to continue highlighting them. Chris Evans, the editor and publisher of the only paper in Crittenden County, pop. 9,000, on the Ohio River in Western Kentucky, reported on what he and his wife Allison have done:

"The Crittenden Press has published a first-person article from a local M.D. encouraging vaccines; an article about a nurse practitioner whose husband was hospitalized and unvaccinated and she changed her tune on the vaccine in a hurry; and we have had a couple of recent op-ed pieces, too. Allison wrote a very well-received column a couple of weeks ago comparing it to smallpox and polio." (See below.)

The Press spotlighted the Covid-19 deaths of a local couple.

"Last week, we began a front-page feature where businesses and/or agencies, including local government, are encouraged to tell us how many of their folks are vaccinated. Then we publish what they tell us. City council went first. We have had good response to that so far. Today I attended the funeral of a husband and wife, both unvaccinated, who died last week. The wife previously worked for us for several years."

Evans concludes, "If Covid hasn’t hit your doorstep yet, it’s coming, and we have heard about pastors preaching against the vaccine from the pulpit. I told Allison today, they may have a big audience, but ours is bigger. You probably know that I am a church-going conservative, but it’s time to use my bully pulpit. I have been somewhat reluctant until now to stick my nose squarely into the middle of this, but I think it is time. I am reminded of the phrase in Dante’s Furnace that 'The darkest places of hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.'"

Here is the column by Allison Evans, headlined "Polio to Covid."

   Hopefully one day our grandchildren will have to Google-search 'Covid-19' to find a definition.
   If they do, this virus will have come to pass.
   Obviously that’s everyone’s daily prayer, that it will disappear from our society like polio, a disease I’ve tried to learn more about lately – more specifically the country’s reaction to the polio vaccine.
   Unlike the Covid-19 vaccine, apparently there was a greater public acceptance of and willingness to receive the polio inoculation.
   Some of today’s Marion residents were in elementary school back in 1955 when the polio vaccine was distributed. Talked to one recently who remembers walking as a group from school to the second-floor health office on East Carlisle Street. After climbing the stairs, students were given the vaccine, which was contained in a chewable sugar cube.

Allison Mick-Evans

   I’ve been wondering whether there was apprehension about the polio vaccine. Was the country divided about its validity, its efficacy? Were people reluctant to have their children vaccinated, were they on the phone talking about their neighbors’ willingness or unwillingness to accept an inoculation to prevent a horrible, debilitating disease that was affecting children at alarming rates?
   Here’s what I found. Surprisingly, it took 47 years from the time polio was identified until a vaccine was distributed. Because of limited technology at the time, scientists and medical professionals started from scratch to develop the vaccine. Since the 1980s, more than 90 percent of school-age children have been vaccinated for polio.
   The quick development of three Covid-19 vaccines was the result of years and years of research in the scientific archives on SARS vaccines. Because Covid and SARS are both coronaviruses diseases, scientists has a head start on dealing with the new strain, which led to the relatively quick creation of a Covid-19 vaccine.
   When it became available in 1955, people couldn’t get the polio vaccine fast enough. One of the reasons, historians say, was that Americans had a deep respect for science. A chorus of social media opinions did not exist back then to confuse the public. A campaign of disinformation and skepticism about the Covid vaccine has clearly created pockets of deep-rooted resistance, doubt and insecurity.
   Polio attacked children. Nearly 60,000 children in 1952 were infected and more than 3,000 died. By comparison, a year’s worth of Covid-19 data show 32 million cases in the U.S. and more than 573,000 deaths. Yet serious Covid illness, so far, is rare among children.
   Years worth of efforts by door-to-door volunteers acting on behalf of the March of Dimes helped Americans feel like they were helping toward the effort to eradicate polio. These are the individuals whose lives were greatly impacted by World War II and many were involved in the war effort not too many years earlier.
   By the time the polio vaccine was available in 1955, parents understood and accepted that the risks of contracting polio were a much greater threat than the risks of the vaccine.
   Sound familiar?
   We’re beginning to understand that about Covid, too. Even though individuals vaccinated for Covid-19 can contract and, unfortunately spread the virus, the risks of serious illness requiring hospitalization are lessened. A study in Georgia released last weekend pointed out that almost 90 percent of Covid hospitalizations were among the unvaccinated. Other data are bearing that out across the country.
   A friend in Louisville who works in the medical industry shared a conversation he recently had with a doctor. Standing outside one of Louisville’s largest hospitals, he pointed to the upper floors and said there were 100 seriously ill Covid patients up there. None of them were vaccinated.
  I’m always one to avoid uncomfortable topics or create controversy. I know there are varying opinions on the Covid-19 vaccine, but I think we’re beginning to see the life-threatening or life-altering effects of not being vaccinated.
   I understand the fear of the unknown. It’s a weakness I share. Being fearful of making the wrong decision is what creates hesitancy, sometimes with serious consequences.
   But we trusted scientists in the 50s to protect our children from polio. Science worked. And now it’s time to let science protect us again.
   The rollout of a life-saving vaccine is something we might only see once or twice in our lifetime. Hopefully no more.
   Folks in the '50s who trusted the process of eradicating polio should be our guide. It’s time we do the same so our kids and grandkids won’t live with Covid-19, but instead will need to Google it.
   Allison Evans is a third-generation owner of The Crittenden Press newspaper. She can be reached at allison@the-press.com.

Most Kentucky faith communities still meet in person, many without requiring masks, and vaccination is a touchy subject

Rev. Carol Harston leads communion at Louisville's Highland Baptist Church. (Bill Campbell photos)

By Bruce Maples and Melissa Patrick

Kentucky Health News

As the state and nation endure another surge of coronavirus cases, how are Kentucky houses of worship dealing with the pandemic? Has their approach changed from the spring to now? And what are they doing to encourage vaccination? Kentucky Health News reached out to a wide range of them to find out.

In our sampling of faith communities, and parent organizations if they have one, nearly all said the pandemic had taken them through stages, from a full shut-down that lasted months, with all worship services done virtually, to more recently offering in-person services that include a range of social distancing and masking requirements. 

The return to in-person services was prompted by a drop in case numbers and the arrival of vaccines, with all of the faith communities looking forward to the day when they could resume most of their normal activities.

But as the highly contagious Delta variant of the virus caused a spike in new cases, many of these same faith communities are moving back to the more cautionary stages that were seen early in the pandemic, with some again going fully masked. A few are moving back to a full shutdown.

"We were just beginning to get back and now we're going backwards again. . . . It's tightening back up," said Gwenda Bizzle, church secretary at First United Methodist Church in Clinton, near the Mississippi River. 

Commonalities across communities

We were struck by the similarity of responses to the pandemic among leaders of churches, synagogues and mosques, including looking to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the governor's office for guidance, including virtual options for worship. 

They also adapted services to ensure the safety of their members by not passing offering plates, discouraging touch during "passing of the peace," limiting singing, and doing temperature checks. 

Some may be guided by the Kentucky Council of Churches, which meets regularly with the governor's office. It has issued a guide for healthy worship including many of these suggestions.

"We highly recommend that all of our membership listen to and speak to their congregations in accord with recommendations that are put out by the CDC and the doctors who are speaking as far as the help of the state, and and we highly recommended that all peoples be vaccinated that are eligible for it," said Melissa Holland, interim executive director at the council, which comprises 21 denominational organizations, primarily but not exclusively on the more moderate and liberal side of the Christian faith.

Highland music associate Austin Echols leads choir in an
anthem he wrote for returning to worship in the sanctuary.

Only one church in our sample had moved back to virtual-only services: Beaumont Presbyterian Church in Lexington, largely driven by the surge of the Delta variant and a positive-test rate that is the highest it's been since the state started widespread testing.  

"We're going to keep doing this until this surge starts heading in the right direction," said the pastor, the Rev. Stephen Fearing. He added, "Some people might say that we're being overly cautious right now. But we're trying to set the example. I think the church should be a moral example to folks and we really want to set the tone that way." 

Most churches said they provide masks, strongly encourage people to wear them and encourage social distancing, but said they had removed systems that placed six feet of distance between families and now say masks are optional, calling them a personal choice. 

"We are encouraging masks, but we are also saying it is your choice; you are grownups, you are adults," said Senior Minister Larry Wilson at Woodlawn Christian Church in Campbellsville. 

Pastor Vince Farrell at Journey Church of Hopkinsville said mask wearing "is your prerogative. You are welcome here with a mask. You are welcome here without a mask." 

Most of faith communities said such decisions were made by their elders, deacons or church councils, and some had boards or committees that included medical professionals from their membership to offer input.  

Innovative measures 

Some communities have found innovative ways to deal with the pandemic. 

Journey Church uses colored arm bands to indicate a person's level of social comfort. Farrell said 85% of his members use green bands, indicating they are comfortable with fist bumps and hand shakes; 12% use yellow, inviting talking but no touching; and 3% use red, which indicate they would rather not socialize. 

Woodlawn Christian is not enforcing social distancing in the same way it did at the beginning of the pandemic, Wilson said the Campbellsville church is keeping track of where its members are sitting, to help contact tracing if someone gets the virus. 

Pastor Mike Caudill of Hindman First Baptist Church said they recorded more than 20 choir songs while their choir members stood 10 to -12 feet apart and now use those recording during both virtual and regular services.

The Louisville-based Mid-Kentucky Presbytery offered $2,000 grants to churches to help them adapt to virtual worship.

The Chabad House congregation in Louisville made special booths for members so they could pray without risking their health. The prayer booths are transparent (from the waist up) so congregants can see others and feel a sense of community, yet still be protected. Another synagogue is doing funerals in person, but only at gravesides. 

Rev. Jim and Mary Helen England at Highland.

What about vaccinations?

Parent organizations, who do not oversee most of the congregations in Kentucky, offered a list of ways they encouraged people to get vaccinated.

They have encouraged congregations to sponsor vaccine clinics and several have done so, and pastors have been encouraged to mention "God's gift of the vaccines" in sermons.  

Others reported that pastors have made pastoral calls on individual families to inquire about vaccine status and encourage getting vaccinated, with one church in the Mid-Kentucky Presbytery achieving a 100% vaccination rate among its regular attendees.

Another congregation is providing rides or money for Uber or Lyft for members to reach vaccination sites. And one faith community said getting vaccinated is mentioned every week in announcements, and information posted on their web site.

But among the sampling of churches interviewed, few of them are preaching about vaccines from the pulpit. 

Wilson, of Campbellsville's Woodlawn, said he has been forthcoming with people about being fully vaccinated, but said that as a church body, "We have not encouraged nor discouraged anyone from being vaccinated."

"We do not speak about current culture issues that don't reflect biblical things," said Hopkinsville's Farrell. "So we focus on preaching Jesus and love for one another. And things [like] vaccinations unfortunately have been so politically charged that we don't bring that into our pulpit."

Some others approach the touchy subject very differently. 

"From the get-go I have been advocating, vocally, for the congregation to get vaccinated," said Fearing of Beaumont Presbyterian. "I've been encouraging them to encourage their co-workers and friends and families to get vaccinated. . . . And our leadership has also been very vocal about that. So it's not something we're afraid to bring up. We see it as a theological issue. Getting vaccinated is how we protect our neighbors. So that's what Jesus calls us to do. So for us, it's a no brainer."

Some take a gentler approach.

Caudill, of Hindman First Baptist, said he encourages his congregation to get vaccinated by telling them that he and many people that they know have gotten vaccinated, "So without telling people you've got to go get vaccinated, they receive encouragement."

Some said they encourage people one-on-one to get vaccinated, but not from the pulpit. 

"I personally have been very up-front with my recommendation for [the] vaccine," said Pastor David Grout of Florence United Methodist Church. "I have had a lot of private conversations with people, encouraging them to get them. I've tried to counter some of the misinformation that I think is out there about vaccines, but we have not had any kind of official stance or anything." 

The Rev. Alex Lockridge of First Baptist Church in Corbin said, “I do believe churches should be more supportive of the local experts and health-care professionals, and taking what they have taught us and sending it out to our people, using our platform to encourage people to do the right thing."

Some have poor compliance

Some churches that Kentucky Health News contacted did not return multiple calls for comment on their practices. But, in the videos of recent worship services from three Baptist churches that are posted online, none of the performers on stage wore masks as they sang for the first 20 minutes of the service. And, in the few shots of the congregations, only one person was seen wearing a mask, even as the congregations also sang and greeted one another with hugs and handshakes while standing close together.

Some churches around the state have been the sources of Covid-19 outbreaks. One organizational leader said they have provided guidance to churches, but have no way to make them comply, even though they have felt the deadly effects of the virus.

Another leader, Rev. John Odom of Mid-Kentucky Presbytery, shared this personal observation: “One of our congregations … chose to ignore our guidance, ignore the CDC guidelines. They kept worshipping in person, without masks, without social distancing, they kept singing. And last December, when infections spiked here in Kentucky, the church service became a super-spreader event for that congregation, and the pastor and several members ended up in the ICU, and the pastor actually died as a result of Covid infection. Which is a great sadness, but at the same time, God always tells us our actions have implications. We reap what we sow, right?”