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Grant will help Eastern Kentucky organization fix more houses

By: - December 6, 2023 3:01 pm

KAHP Presents Grant to St. Vincent Mission in David Kentucky (Credit KAHP)

The Kentucky Association of Health Plans has given a $50,000 grant to Saint Vincent Mission in Floyd County, which the organization says will go toward building a new warehouse.?

With the extra storage space in David, the organization says it can hold onto more materials and fix 15 more houses annually in an area that was doubly devastated by deadly floods in 2021 and 2022.?

“We have been limited in the houses we could turn a year because we have been constrained on the amount of purchased and donated construction materials, disaster relief tools, and equipment and cleanup supplies we could store at one time,” Erin Bottomlee, Executive Director of Saint Vincent Mission, said in a statement. “Disaster Relief workers will spend less time traveling to multiple locations for supplies. This will improve our ability to address the role of housing as a social determinant of health in a more efficient manner.”?

Dozens died in the recent deadly floods in Eastern Kentucky, and many more homes were destroyed. Housing problems remain an issue in the area, the Lantern previously reported. As well as housing repair, Saint Vincent has a food pantry and other services in Eastern Kentucky.?

The Kentucky Association of Health Plans is the trade association for Kentucky’s health insurance industry.?????????????????

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Sarah Ladd
Sarah Ladd

Sarah Ladd is a Louisville-based journalist from West Kentucky who's covered everything from crime to higher education. She spent nearly two years on the metro breaking news desk at The Courier Journal. In 2020, she started reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic and has covered health ever since. As the Kentucky Lantern's health reporter, she focuses on mental health, LGBTQ+ issues, children's welfare, COVID-19 and more.

Kentucky Lantern is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

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