Our latest health care stop: a remote village near the Arctic Circle.
Your guide is Ruralite magazine’s most-seasoned journalist, Mike Teegarden, who traveled more than 2,000 miles, hopping on planes big and small, to tell an intimate, vivid, on-the- ground story of health care for a native community of just 550 people in Buckland, Alaska.
This is a place where everyone truly knows your name, and where health care is family.
What did Mike learn about Buckland in this latest chapter exploring the changing face of rural health care?
The people of Buckland are proud of who they are and how they live. They love to share stories of how they harvest their food
and how they survive in a remote—and sometimes hostile—location.
He also learned that health aides are the lifeblood of the community. These aides do important—and some- times heartbreaking—work. They fill several rolls in the community: neighbor, family member and healer, sometimes at the same time.