May is Mental Health Awareness month and also coincides with the spring planting season.

May is Mental Health Awareness month and also coincides with the spring planting season.

Brenna Westlake was born in December 2011 with Harlequin Ichthyosis (HI), a very rare and sometimes fatal skin disease. Babies born with HI lack a protein that moves fats to the skin’s surface layer to create a strong barrier.

Brenna Westlake was born in December 2011 with Harlequin Ichthyosis (HI), a very rare and sometimes fatal skin disease. Babies born with HI lack a protein that moves fats to the skin’s surface layer to create a strong barrier.

Brenna Westlake was born in December 2011 with Harlequin Ichthyosis (HI), a very rare and sometimes fatal skin disease. Babies born with HI lack a protein that moves fats to the skin’s surface layer to create a strong barrier.

Within an operating room, surgeons sometimes notice little things that they wish they could do better. A change that could improve the medical outcome or the patient’s post-op convalescence is not to be ignored.

Within an operating room, surgeons sometimes notice little things that they wish they could do better. A change that could improve the medical outcome or the patient’s post-op convalescence is not to be ignored.

Within an operating room, surgeons sometimes notice little things that they wish they could do better. A change that could improve the medical outcome or the patient’s post-op convalescence is not to be ignored.

Within an operating room, surgeons sometimes notice little things that they wish they could do better. A change that could improve the medical outcome or the patient’s post-op convalescence is not to be ignored.

Southern Illinois University (SIU) Medicine Department of Population Science and Policy , SIU Paul Simon Public Policy Institute , SIU Medicine Center for Rural Health and Social Service Development and University of Illinois Chicago School of Public Health built upon the work of the 2018 Illinois Rural Health Summit and convened rural health stakeholders for 11 discussion forums to better understand and address the COVID-19 pandemic in rural Illinois. Using the 2019 report of the most pressing issues facing rural Illinois as a foundation for discussion, eighty rural leaders representing more