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Rapidly growing rural communities may experience many forms of disruptions, jeopardizing residents' place attachment and identity. This qualitative case study uses the boomtown and newcomer/oldtimer literatures to examine how schools shape the local 'us-versus-them' discourse. Data for this research include interviews with community members (n=27) and interviews and observations of K-12 school staff (n=14). Findings indicate boomtown residents and teachers strengthened their place identity and attributed place disruptions and risks to newcomers, inhibiting their acceptance. Administrators' planning decisions and teachers' pedagogy in practice shaped this discourse. Teachers reinforced newcomer resistance by presenting them as symbols of disruption and risk which threatened their traditional rural community identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communities experiencing rapid growth due to energy development ('boomtowns') have reported positive and negative impacts on community and individual well-being. The perceptions of impacts vary according to stage of energy development as well as experience with extractive industries. Development of the Marcellus Shale provides an opportunity to examine these impacts over time and across geographic and historical contexts. This paper describes case study research in Pennsylvania and New York to document preliminary impacts of development occurring there. Cases vary by level of development and previous extractive history. The study finds that, in areas with low population density, higher levels of development lead to a broader awareness of natural gas impacts, both positive and negative. Participants draw from the regional history of extraction to express environmental concern despite direct, local experience. Our findings suggest the need to track these perceptions during development, and as individuals and communities react and adapt to the impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Access to medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD) varies across the rural-urban continuum. The Hub & Spoke Model (H&S) emerged to address these gaps in service whereby hubs with staff expertise in MOUD support delivery of specialized care to a network of spoke locations, often located in rural communities with workforce shortages. This paper presents a case study of efforts to implement the hub and spoke model in a frontier and rural (FAR) state: Montana., Methods: The primary data are structured interviews with 65 MOUD program staff in hub and spoke locations within Montana. Both inductive and deductive coding were used to analyze the transcripts., Findings: Using the H&S structure to expand access to MOUD in Montana led to mixed results. There were consistent themes identified in the interviews about the reasons why hubs struggled to successfully recruit spokes, including (1) geographic barriers, (2) a lack of interest among medical providers, (3) fears about excessive demand, (4) concerns about the financial viability of the model, and (5) a preference for informal technical assistance rather than a formal H&S relationship. In addition to these 5 themes, efforts to implement H&S across different medical systems were unsuccessful, whereas the H&S model worked more effectively when H&S locations were within the same organization., Conclusion: This case study identified limits to the H&S model utility in supporting states' abilities to expand access to MOUD treatment and offers suggestions for adapting it to accommodate variation across divergent rural contexts. We conclude with recommendations for strategies that may assist in expansion of MOUD in rural communities that are like those found in Montana., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting Interests: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article., (© The Author(s) 2021.)