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What about Coosa County? 
The central Alabama county, home to less than 11,000 residents, has no hospital. Its county health department closed its doors in 2016, shuffling residents to county departments to the north and east for services. 
Hutcherson, fresh to Coosa County’s emergency management director position after years at the state EMA, wondered what his residents were supposed to do. 
“We were being forgotten,” Hutcherson said. “They needed someone to remind them: ‘Look, we re here, too.’ So much emphasis was put on getting vaccinations to health departments, and we don t have one.”
Rural residents have for years fallen through the cracks of Alabama’s health care and economic infrastructure. But a raging pandemic has exposed those cracks as fault lines, revealing disproportionately fatal outcomes and higher rates of disease in rural communities isolated and with limited access to health care.  ....

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