On June 23 I went to a Pharmacy Town Hall Meeting held by Martella’s Pharmacy in Boswell, Pa. There was a panel discussing how the Pharmacy Benefit Management (PBM) corporations like Express Scripts refuse to include local pharmacies like Martella’s Pharmacy in their networks. This is a major loss of revenue for these pharmacies. There […]

As a follow-up to my post on pharmacy deserts in Pennsylvania, Lyrical Capo has written a post on the local pharmacy desert in Johnstown. “When the pharmacy closes, the community suffers.” Emphatically, this harsh reality has hit home in Johnstown, PA, where Rite Aid has abandoned numerous locations, leaving residents struggling to access essential healthcare […]

On this page we have written about news deserts, food deserts, and legal deserts. Now we can add pharmacy desert to this list. At the end of June, Rite Aid has closed all of its stores in the Johnstown area. The Center for Rural Pennsylvania has published a fact sheet on Pharmacy deserts in Rural […]

Two weeks ago I looked at Chlamydia and mortality rates from all causes in Cambria and Somerset County zip codes. This week I thought I would take a look at how chlamydia rates are correlated with social ailments in the county zip codes. The first variable I looked with Chlamydia rates Mortality from drug use […]

Above is an ad run by Democratic Cambria County Commisioners Tom Chernisky and BJ Smith against their opponent, Republican Jerry Carnicella.  They take him to task for not voting in the last two commissioner elections, being delinquent on his taxes and supporting a single payer/Medicare for All healthcare system.  I can’t comment on the first […]

Back on April 4, I posted on how African American life expectancy in Cambria County lagged behind the state and US rates and behind other groups.  This can be seen in the Table below.  Questions were put to me on how the opioid epidemic might be related to this discrepancy. Group Life Expectancy (Years) Cambria […]

Two posts I talked about how ago I spoke about how educational attainment (defined as having a bachelors degree or higher) and and the % white in Pennsylvania counties predict 86% of Trump’s vote in the state.  Once in a while new county level data is released and I add it to the regression mode.  […]