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Introducing the Appalachian Advocacy Toolkit

Marcus J. Hopkins
Feb 23 min read
The image is an illustrated scene featuring several silhouetted figures raising their hands against a backdrop of layered hills and a sunset sky. The figures are in varying shades of dark colors, standing amidst stylized trees. In the top left corner, a logo with a multicolored arc and text reads "APPLI, Appalachian Learning Initiative, www.appli.org." To the right, bold text in dark brown states, "Raise your voice and demand to BE HEARD," with a smaller URL beneath: "cutt.ly/APPLI-Advocacy." Along the bottom, the text "Appalachian Advocacy Toolkit" is prominently displayed.
Find contact information for the federal elected officials who serve Appalachia's 13 states, 423 counties, and 8 independent Virginia cities

By: Marcus J. Hopkins

February 2nd, 2025


The Appalachian Learning Initiative (APPLI, like "apply") has launched the first iteration of its latest tool:



The Appalachian Region is home to some of the most scenic views in the United States, and the people who live in our region are diverse and resilient.


However, within our rolling hills, many of our fellow community members experience significant barriers that may hinder educational attainment, place upward financial and social mobility out of reach, and contribute to adverse health outcomes.


From literacy proficiency to poverty to health outcomes, the issues that impact the lives of Appalachians deserve attention.


APPLI is dedicated to researching and reporting on these disparities and engaging in advocacy to create solutions to address them.

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As part of this effort, we have been working to build the Appalachian Advocacy Toolkit. This interactive resource allows those who share our dedication to improving the lives of Appalachians to find contact information for the elected and appointed officials responsible for addressing their constituents' needs.

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This process is time-consuming, requiring hundreds of hours of research, information gathering, fact-checking, and updating. These efforts are vital to ensuring that the people who call the Appalachian Region home know who to contact when their voices need to be heard.


The image shows a map of the Appalachian region colored to indicate poverty rates, with a color gradient ranging from green to red. Green represents lower poverty rates (7.4%), while red indicates higher rates (54.9%). Darker shades of red appear in Kentucky, Mississippi, and West Virginia, highlighting higher poverty concentrations. On the left, there is a white section with text and a watercolor-style view of a forested hillside in autumn colors to the right.
Appalachian residents in Kentucky, Mississippi, and West Virginia face extreme levels of poverty

Recent events have prompted us to debut the Appalachian Advocacy Toolkit earlier than we intended. The nation is facing unprecedented threats to the institutions upon which Appalachians rely:


  • Educators at both the K-12 and higher education levels are increasingly facing threats from lawmakers who ban books, inject their personal religious beliefs into public school curricula, and attempt to redirect public tax dollars to private schools, 65% of which go to families who could already afford to send their children to private school;


  • Nearly 1 out of every 6 Appalachian residents and their families (~16%) who rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) may go hungry;


  • More than 1 out of every 4 men, women, and children (~27%) who are publicly insured may become sick or die after being forced to delay or skip life-saving medical appointments and medications;


  • Public health officials may be unable to respond to infectious disease outbreaks, including HIV, Hepatitis, Syphilis, Tuberculosis, Whooping Cough, Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), and Bird Flu (H5N1) because they are unable to access vital data systems from the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the AtlasPlus tool;


  • Cities and states across the country that are working to modernize our infrastructure, weatherize our homes, and clean up environmental disasters have received stop-work orders from federal officials and the data tools that provide insight into which communities are bearing the impacts of climate change.


These risks are not imaginary—they are existential, and they require our organization to provide the constituency we serve with the contact information of the federal officials elected to represent them.


With these risks in mind, we have released the first iteration of the Appalachian Advocacy Toolkit.


In this version, only information for Appalachia's federal elected officials is available, including names, party affiliations, counties they serve, committee assignments, social media channels, websites, office locations, and contact information.


In addition to the main Advocacy Toolkit page, each state's individual page has state-specific data to help users streamline their search. Users can search by county in the state-level sections—a feature we hope to bring to the main Advocacy Toolkit page soon, allowing users to filter legislators by state and county.


Our Advocacy Toolkit is not designed to tell Appalachians what positions to take; our role is to provide our constituents with sufficient education, health, and social determinant data to form their own positions and advocate for them.


If you believe that adult educational opportunities deserve more federal funding, that more funds are needed for infectious disease surveillance, or that your county needs federal funding for an infrastructure project, we are asking YOU to reach out to your elected representatives to make your case, armed with data to back up your positions.


In these perilous times, it is more important than ever to remind our elected officials that they DO NOT work for any one president, for any unelected billionaires, for any government agency, or for any corporations—they work for us.


You can check out the Appalachian Advocacy Toolkit by clicking on the button below:




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