Black Belt receives a $1.2 million grant
Tuscaloosa News – Dec. 6
Gov. Bob Riley on Wednesday announced a $1.2 million private sector grant that will be used partly to recruit doctors to extend mental health services to the Black Belt…One of the organizations involved is the University of Alabama College of Community Health Sciences. Dr. Thad Ulzen, chair of the department of psychiatry and behavioral medicine at Alabama’s medical school in Tuscaloosa, said his goal is to recruit physicians for residency fellowships in public and rural psychiatry to serve the 12 central and West Alabama counties in the high-poverty Black Belt region, so named because of the color of its soil. “The plan is, if we’re able to get two people a year to train in public health and psychiatry, we hope they will stay, because there is a dire need for public rural psychiatry,” he said. “You’re able to keep people if they train in an area.”…

Shark fossils in Alabama
ABC 33/40 (Birmingham) – Dec. 5
Eighty million years ago, Alabama was under a shallow sea, teeming with marine life…this site is located near Selma and is operated by the University of Alabama Museum of Natural History…