Charleston Gazette-Mail – Diabetes, obesity and “seven pillars” of health care to combat them were the topic of a panel discussion Friday, which focused heavily on the $199.5 million in grants West Virginia is set to receive through the federal Rural Healthcare Transformation Fund.
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Facilitated as part of the recent passage of the federal One Big, Beautiful Bill, states will receive $100 million in rural health care funding per year for five years, with the annual option to apply for supplemental funding to accommodate unique needs. West Virginia’s 2026 supplemental application secured the state an additional $99.5 million, which state Health Secretary Arvin Singh said will help reduce the prevalence of diabetes and obesity throughout West Virginia moving forward.
Reducing diabetes and obesity rates statewide
Speaking at the Culture Center at the Capitol Complex as part of a four-person panel during the West Virginia Press Association’s Legislative Lookahead conference, Singh told attendees, “A lot of the efforts we put into that application … focus on [diabetes and obesity]. In that five-year program, we wrote and held ourselves accountable to reducing diabetes prevalence to get out of that bottom quartile.”
