Stories

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

Nick Brisini has written the poem Appalachian Fire. Below is a video of him doing another poetry reading. Discarded snuff cans, empty beer bottles line back roads to a cold hell below. In the mines of Appalachia men and women worked and some died. Others spent their final days gasping for breath. Then the mines […]

In a follow up to the last post on flu vaccinations and the Trump 2024 vote in Pennsylvania, county level white rates will be looked at. Out of the 67 counties in PA, 44 of them have flu vaccination rates for whites, 43 have rates for African Americans, 38 have rates for Asian Americans, and […]

On Cinco de Mayo I went to a community meeting at Mayor Sylvia King’s Christ Centered Community Church. It was by Vision Together (formerly Vision 2025) on Capture Teams. Capture teams are groups of people with projects intended to improve the quality of life in Johnstown. You can see their presentations in the video below. […]

Another measure from County Health Rankings recently updated was suicide rates. This is a moving average for the years 2019-2023. The rates adjust for the population and age distribution in the county to enable comparison of the counties. This post will focus on new suicide rates in Pennsylvania. The map above illustrates counties with higher […]

The Epstein files are like our generation’s Pentagon Papers. One can go to the Department of Justice’s website to query the files. Donald Trump’s name appears in 1,747 documents in the database. Jon Stewart, in the video above, explained how his name appears in the files. Out of curiosity I entered the name Paul Ricci […]

When posting the previous posts on poverty on the sub-reddit for Pennsylvania I was asked repeatedly how many of the poor counties voted for Trump. This post is an attempt answer their question. I looked at the correlation between median income, poverty rates and Trump’s % of the vote for 2024. What I found was […]

My third post on the new Small Area Income Estimates (SAIPE) focuses on the poorest school districts in Pennsylvania. This is expressed as a percentage of their student bodies who meet the federal definition of poverty. When summarizing the top 20 poorest school districts in PA, 14 of the 20 are in the Alleghenies. The […]