Katheryn Houghton, Kaiser Health News

BOULDER, Mont. — Twice a year, Brian Tichenor makes the 1,200-mile drive each way from his home in Kansas to a defunct uranium mine in Montana, where he takes an elevator 85 feet below the surface to sit amid radioactive radon gas to ease the pain from his chronic eye condition.

As states expand covid-19 vaccine eligibility to allow shots for 16- and 17-year-olds, teens in rural America may have trouble getting them.

Montana’s overstretched counties and tribal governments have developed a mishmash of policies and plans that require ingenuity and mutual support to work. A reporting project by KHN, Montana Free Press and the University of Montana School of Journalism finds the biggest test of that disparate system looms as vaccine eligibility expands. PLUS: a county-by-county guide to vaccine availability in Montana.

COVID-19 cases are surging in rural places across the Mountain States and Midwest, and when it hits health care workers, ready reinforcements aren’t easy to find.