Canary in the Coal Mine: A Forgotten Rural Community, a Hidden Epidemic, and a Lone Doctor Battling for the Life, Health, and Soul of the People
Ebook
One doctor’s courageous fight to save a small town from a silent epidemic that threatened the community’s future—and exposed a national health crisis.
When Dr. Will Cooke, an idealistic young physician just out of medical training, set up practice in the small rural community of Austin, Indiana, he had no idea that much of the town was being torn apart by poverty, addiction, and life-threatening illnesses. But he soon found himself at the crossroads of two unprecedented health-care disasters: a national opioid epidemic and the worst drug-fueled HIV outbreak ever seen in rural America.
Confronted with Austin’s hidden secrets, Dr. Cooke decided he had to do something about them. In taking up the fight for Austin’s people, however, he would have to battle some unanticipated foes: prejudice, political resistance, an entrenched bureaucracy—and the dark despair that threatened to overwhelm his own soul. Canary in the Coal Mine is a gripping account of the transformation of a man and his adopted community, a compelling and ultimately hopeful read in the vein of Hillbilly Elegy, Dreamland, and Educated.
From the first poignant vignette through many dramatic moments to its inspiringly compassionate conclusion, Dr. William Cooke’s book is a gripping medical chronicle infused with wisdom, science, and deep humanity.
You couldn’t find more authoritative tour guides of rural America than Dr. Cooke and Laura Ungar, who have lived and worked among its people—their people—for decades. The pair’s medical savvy and crackling prose can compete with the best out there. . . . This gripping, heartbreaking, and ultimately hopeful book is about far more than a tiny town and its hardscrabble people, many of whom were affected by one of the biggest HIV outbreaks in US history. It’s a look at where so much of America has been heading when so many others weren’t watching.
A very powerful and immensely moving must-read for anyone working to end the syndemics of opioid use disorder, poverty, and the HIV/hepatitis C epidemics among people who inject drugs in rural America. . . . This book is a major contribution that challenges us to see the humanness in everyone and inspires us to care and work to end the suffering caused by the opioid crisis!
What a fantastic, inspiring, and informative book on how one person made the difference in leading a rural community from a devastating HIV outbreak and opioid addiction problem to a community of hope and healing. Dr. Will Cooke superbly tells the story of how he, the only physician in the community, guided a small rural town in southern Indiana to recovery by focusing on compassionate, person-centered care. This book is a must-read for all medical students and other health-care professionals. Once you start reading it, you won’t be able to stop.
I found this book to be an inspiring autobiography of how one committed physician truly made a difference in addressing an urgent public health problem through partnerships, persistence, and compassion.
People who use drugs haven’t changed. What has changed is the way physicians and society have become more willing and able to see the humanity of people instead of only their disease and substance use. In his book Canary in the Coal Mine, Will Cooke reaches inward and articulates the steps of his change in a personal treatise of a family physician working to care for an onslaught of opioid injection–related HIV and hepatitis C infection in a small rural town. A black doctor in Chicago reminds Dr. Cooke that blacks have been in the midst of a heroin and HIV epidemic for years. Society was too ready to see this as a problem of “other” and embark on a drug war instead of a treatment war. Dr. Cooke’s care transforms to embrace the tenets of treatment and harm reduction that characterize the care of most diseases, and he articulates their application to mental health and addiction. Primary care serves as the de facto mental health and addiction treatment system in the US. Canary in the Coal Mine reminds us how woefully unprepared and under-resourced these front-line clinicians are. His book provides a wake-up call to the structural violence suffered by too many and should serve as a humanitarian roadmap to address these challenges.
- Title: Canary in the Coal Mine: A Forgotten Rural Community, a Hidden Epidemic, and a Lone Doctor Battling for the Life, Health, and Soul of the People
- Authors: William Cooke, Laura Ungar
- Publisher: Tyndale Refresh
- Print Publication Date: 2021
- Logos Release Date: 2022
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781496446510, 9781496446480, 1496446488, 1496446518
- Resource ID: LLS:9781496446510
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2023-06-17T10:08:45Z