According to the Centers for Disease Control, over 70,000 Americans died of an overdose in 2017, over 47,000 of which involved opioids.  The Utah Department of Health reported that Utah has been ranked in the top 10 states for overdose deaths for the last 10 years, and Carbon and Emery counties have opioid overdose mortality rates 2.5 times the national average.  In order to address these issues, a summit will be held this week at Utah State University Eastern in Price.

Healthcare advocates are touring the state of Utah this summer, meeting with citizens, healthcare providers and community leaders concerned that the state’s rollback of Medicaid expansion will harm vulnerable Utahns.

Hiking in the Utah mountains, Casey Hunter slipped and fell down a steep snowy incline and boulder patch. With his leg hanging and patched together with a make-shift tourniquet, he crawled up the mountain, found the cell phone he had dropped in the fall, and called his wife, Amy. A Life Flight hoist team rescued him from the slope. 

The Tribal and Rural Opioid Initiative was launched by Utah State University Extension in 2018 in an effort to provide effective resources to address opioid use among rural Utahns. The initiative team is working to combat the effects of opioid misuse through prevention, recovery and treatment, with a primary focus on stigma reduction education. Today on Access Utah we preview the summit.

Utah’s national parks are having more visitors, but unfortunately, they are leaving more trash. 

Colby Sorenson is 27, Charles Salzberg is 75.  Ordinarily they would not mix, but when they came into the UPR studio, they discovered their life experiences had led them to a very similar place.

It’s early morning at Sand Flats Recreation Area as a small group of people makes their way over sandstone and brush. Usually, visitors to Sand Flats bring their mountain bikes or off-road vehicles. They’re recreators in search of the internationally famous trails over slick rock. But this particular group of people - walking with notebooks and sturdy shoes - is searching out something else.

George Bird Grinnell, the son of a New York merchant, saw a different future for a nation in the thrall of the Industrial Age. With railroads scarring virgin lands and the formerly vast buffalo herds decimated, the country faced a crossroads: Could it pursue Manifest Destiny without destroying its natural bounty and beauty? The alarm that Grinnell sounded would spark America’s conservation movement. Yet today his name has been forgotten—an omission that John Taliaferro’s commanding biography now sets right with historical care and narrative flair.

Cache Valley and the Bear River Range that borders its eastern edge are anomalies - especially considering the abundance of water coursing through its canyons and valley bottom.