Last night, destructive storms tore through much of the state of Michigan. I was passively listening to a livestream on the Michigan Storm Chasers Facebook page when I heard an alarmed voice say “tornado on the ground, I repeat, tornado heading right toward downtown Hastings. If you are anywhere in the area, take cover now.” Admittedly, after living through many major storms and a Spring already riddled with severe storm warnings, we probably didn’t heed the earlier warnings soon enough. We quickly moved to take cover and as I sat in the stairwell with our three big dogs at the bottom and my husband in his wheelchair at the top, I was filled with the anxiety of the added layer of disaster preparedness when someone in your family has a disability.
This storm passed us as it took a sharp turn and headed toward another community. Our family is safe and woke up to minimal damage this morning. But I can’t help but think about the families who were impacted and who have historically been overlooked in the community response to other natural disasters.
Redefining the Crisis
It’s no secret that public health in the United States is chronically underfunded. Local health departments are expected to do more with less every year: respond to major storms and other climate events, track outbreaks, promote healthy living, address chronic diseases, and now, increasingly, prepare for mental health emergencies. But this underfunding has a disproportionate impact in rural areas, where health departments serve wide geographic regions with fewer staff, limited infrastructure, and often outdated technology.
While statistics and funding gaps are easy to cite, the deeper issue is more systemic: our public systems are often not built in partnership with the people most affected. It’s rare to find people with lived experience at the tables where decisions are made about public health, emergency planning, or pandemic response. That absence shapes the priorities, the language, and ultimately, the effectiveness of community solutions.
People with disabilities within these rural areas hold an incredible amount of wisdom about navigating barriers, solving problems with limited resources, and building mutual support. But that knowledge often goes untapped in larger public conversations. Rather than seeing rural disability communities as problems to be solved, what if we saw them as partners in finding solutions?
A Call to Reimagine
The problem with the problem is that we keep diagnosing it in the same ways, defining rural America by what it lacks, defining disability as a barrier, and defining public health by what it does for people instead of what we can do in partnership with them.
It’s time to break out of that cycle. If we want creative, community-based, resilient solutions, we need to fund public health like it matters and we need to center the voices that have too long been silenced.
Rural America doesn’t need charity. It needs collaboration. People with disabilities don’t need sympathy. They need a seat at the table. The future of our communities depends on it.