Eastern Kentucky is showing the country what rural renewal actually looks like | Opinion
For years, too much of the national conversation about rural America has focused on what has been lost. Factories closed. Coal jobs disappeared. Young people moved away.
As two leaders from different parts of rural America, one a former Democratic U.S. senator from North Dakota, the other a Republican and president of the Kentucky State Senate, we know these challenges are real. But after spending two days traveling through communities across Eastern Kentucky with the Brookings-AEI Commission on U.S. Rural Prosperity, we came away convinced the country is still missing the bigger story. The commission, a bipartisan body examining policy solutions to rural economic decline, visited the region as part of a national series of field hearings on what is and isn’t working in rural communities.
From Manchester using its heritage and swinging bridges to attract tourists, to downtown Hazard where artists and entrepreneurs are writing a new chapter for a town long defined by coal, Eastern Kentucky stands as an example of how rural America is not standing still.
Over two days, the commission heard from local leaders in housing, higher education, health care, and philanthropy, as well as job creators, local officials and nonprofit organizations. Despite differing perspectives, several key themes surfaced repeatedly: retaining talent, driving targeted economic investment, and confronting the substance use crisis to save lives and help people heal are key to changing the Eastern Kentucky landscape.
While these priorities may look like separate policy buckets, the strongest consensus centered on people, and the recognition that economic renewal is fundamentally tied to taking care of the residents who power these communities.
We see this reality playing out vividly across numerous counties, including Clay, Leslie, Harlan and Breathitt, among others, where outmigration has historically taken a toll as coal jobs vanished. For too long, a negative national narrative, the rise in substance use, and a lack of diversified employers left the region vulnerable.
Rather than accept decline, local leaders are intentionally mobilizing resources to reverse these dynamics through innovative nonprofit organizations. One example is 1 Clay County (1CC), a nonprofit whose vision is to transform downtown Manchester into a hub of commerce, tourism and community life.
Moving a region forward requires a strategy that pairs infrastructure investment with a deep commitment to the health and safety of its people. On the economic side, this means securing millions of dollars in state funding, but the leaders at 1CC will also tell you that fixing utility lines and buildings only gets you halfway there, you also have to invest in the people who will actually sustain it. In Eastern Kentucky, addressing substance use disorder is a critical pillar of workforce development. By confronting the trauma and intergenerational challenges of addiction head-on, communities can heal families while actively restoring and retaining their workforce.
Rural communities are not failing because of a lack of effort, but because systems built in Washington, D.C. fail to fit rural realities. True renewal happens when policymakers appropriate the necessary resources but remain hands-off enough to trust local leaders to design and execute the projects that fit their unique needs.
Eastern Kentucky is proving something important to the rest of the country: renewal is possible when communities have the leadership, institutional support, and flexibility to shape their own future.
It is a lesson the Brookings-AEI Commission on U.S. Rural Prosperity intends to carry to policymakers in the nation’s capital and beyond.
Heidi Heitkamp represented North Dakota in the U.S. Senate and serves as co-chair of the Brookings-AEI Commission on U.S. Rural Prosperity. Robert Stivers is President of the Kentucky State Senate and accompanied the commission on their visit.