Blog

Hello. My Name is Paul Ricci, MS MA. I have been a statistician/blogger for 20 years who has written on a variety of topics in and around the Allegheny Mountain Region of Pennsylvania. This project is an expansion of these efforts to further study issues facing the area without fluff. Below is a video introduction […]

by Paul Ricci Before I profiled the 100 least healthy and the 100 most healthy zip codes in Pennsylvania. However, there is more to the Alleghenies than just Pennsylvania. It covers the southwestern tier counties of New York state, the western counties of Maryland, almost the whole state of West Virginia and the bordering western […]

By Paul Ricci Much has been made of the clash between Gov. Josh Shapiro and HHS secretary Robert Kennedy Jr with Kennedy disputing the 2 measles deaths in the state. The state maintains a dashboard showing the measles outbreak numbers in the Pennsylvania. I will now look at what these numbers are saying. The image […]

by Paul Ricci We received a large response to the post on the 100 least healthy zip codes in Pennsylvania. This time I thought that I would take a look at the other side of the coin. The data comes from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). The 100 healthiest zip-codes in Pennsylvania as […]

by Paul Ricci On Saturday August 22, the 2026 Johnstown LGBTQ Pride Fest was held at the Cambria County War Memorial. It is also known as the 1st Summit Arena. It was organized once again by John DeBartola. It was indoors and in August because Central Park was still under renovation. DeBartola has criticized this […]

Right after completing the previous post on the HRSA data set I came across this article in the Guardian titled Trump 2.0 has deleted or altered nearly 400 US datasets, endangering public health, education and more. As someone who relies on these releases to find meaningful social, environmental, political and economic trends for the Alleghenies, […]

by Paul Ricci Annually the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) comes out with an Unmet Need Score (UNS) for every zip code in the U.S. The UNS is a composite of 33 health variables at the zip code level. This post will focus on the 100 zip codes with the highest UNSs in Pennsylvania. […]

Nick Brisini has written this piece on the great Cassandra coal strike in 1932. The battle for human rights in the Appalachian coal fields had a long history and, if studied, has a lot of lessons for workers today. One strike, barely known, was the great Cassandra coal strike of 1932. It was a yearlong […]

Jackie Allison wrote this humorous piece, Working Class Majority, for the online magazine Funny Times in 2015. It is still relevant today and is reprinted with permission. I suggest a new government party, the Working Class Majority. Note that it would be called a majority, not a party. The working class isn’t a hedonistic picnic. […]

by Paul Ricci Watching Dr. Anthony Fauci get grilled by the U.S. Senate Homeland Security Committee brought back a lot of memories of the struggles of the pandemic. The committee is chaired by Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky). He is a trained ophthalmologist. Senator Paul is now pursuing contempt of Congress charges against Fauci after he […]

On July 24 & 25, I went to two events: one in Pittsburgh and one in Bellwood, PA. The former was a One Payer States panel on strategies to push for Medicare for All at the state level. The other group was a vigil in honor of the two men killed by ICE in Maine […]