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In 2010, West Virginia received a $126 million federal stimulus grant to bring high-speed Internet across the state. The Gazette is scrutinizing the state's stimulus spending in an ongoing series of reports.

West Virginia leads the nation in diabetes, heart attacks, and obesity, among others. One in four West Virginia 11-year-olds has high blood pressure and high cholesterol. One in five kindergartners is obese.

As one public health official said, “This is a public health emergency.”

Learn about the problem, meet people who are trying to bring those numbers down, and learn what you can do.

This ongoing project has been created with the help of the Dennis A. Hunt Fund for Health Journalism, administered by the California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

The stories can also be viewed in chronological order at www.theshapewerein.wordpress.com

West Virginia has the nation's highest rate of drug overdose deaths, with most involving prescription drugs. In January 2011, the Gazette published a four-day series on prescription drug abuse, and we continue to cover this topic.

Chronicling police oversight in West Virginia

On April 5, 2010 an explosion inside the Upper Big Branch mine in Montcoal, W.Va. killed 29 miners. It was the worst U.S. coal mining disaster in 40 years.

A mess hangs over Workforce West Virginia, the state's employment training office. An ongoing Gazette investigation shows that a state official funneled grant money to her son's computer firm � even after the son was on his way to prison for making lavish purchases on the Internet with stolen credit card numbers.

An occasional series examining federal health care reform bills and their effect on West Virginians.

In West Virginia, mining companies are literally moving mountains to uncover valuable, low sulfur coal reserves. Mountaintop removal has become the dominant form of surface mining in the state. Coal operators are blasting off hilltops, and dumping leftover rock and dirt into nearby valleys. An untold amount of the state has been flattened, and hundreds of miles of streams have been buried. Find out more in this Special Report.

It's been 30 years since the worst construction accident in U.S. history claimed 51 lives in Pleasants County. Look back on the disaster, the investigation and the people left behind.

Watch an audio slideshow with historic photos

Click here for more related multimedia

As the mortgage crisis shakes the national economy, what about West Virginia? What is the state's real foreclosure rate? Are there warning signs? What can policymakers do to protect West Virginia homeowners? West Virginia lenders foreclose far less often than out-of-state lenders do. What can be done to bring down the out-of-state rate?

Roy Plummer robbed at least 14 banks in the 1980s. He fooled, among others, his first wife and baseball star John Kruk. When Plummer got out of jail, he started robbing again. His second wife Kathy Plummer believed he had been wrongly imprisoned and says she had no idea he resumed his life of crime.

Watch video from the anniversary event
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By nearly all measures, West Virginians have the worst dental health in the nation. Find out why.

Slideshow

Predatory and illegal mortgage loans have devastated thousands of home-loving West Virginians. The Gazette-Mail tells you how it happens, visits with elderly West Virginians trapped in such mortgages and lets you hear from people who are trying to do something about it.

Click here to listen to the accompanying West Virginia Public Radio report.

Poisonings -- mostly drug overdoses -- now kill more Americans than guns. The fastest growing killers aren't cocaine or heroin, they're prescription pain drugs -- and West Virginians are more likely to die of overdoses than people in any other state.
Read about this dilemma in a joint Gazette/West Virginia Public Broadcasting investigation.

Hear Kim Garner tell her story

Are West Virginia's forests really growing faster and faster? Or are loggers cutting down more trees than they should? Can the state really sustain continued growth in the timber industry? And are we doing enough to educate landowners about managing their forests? Find out in a special series on the state's forests, The Forest for the Trees, originally published in a series of installments from September through December 1996. To read this series, click here.

Since West Virginia enacted its new welfare rules, 2,100 welfare recipients have been cut off. Some have found jobs, some have been placed in training jobs, and still others have had to cut back on college hours to comply with tougher work requirements. Explore the facets of West Virginia's version of welfare reform in this seven-part series by clicking here.

In 1997, a national environmental group charged that pollution from the poultry industry had turned the Potomac River into one of the 10 most endangered rivers in North America. More recently, fingers pointed at poultry farm runoff as the cause of a toxic microbe outbreak that killed fish in two Maryland streams. West Virginia officials say the state's chicken business is doing plenty to protect the environment. Are they right? Or is poultry really polluting the Potomac? Find out, in this special series published in October 1998.

The state Workers' Compensation Fund was formed in 1913, and in that first year, it paid out $300,000 more than it took in. Today the deficit exceeds $2 billion, just shy of the state's entire general revenue budget for last year. How could such a tremendous debt be created? Who is responsible? Who will pay the astronomical cost, and could it be all West Virginia wage earners? Find out in this four-part series by clicking here.

Over the past few decades, video poker machines have become as standard as pool tables in West Virginia's taverns. Today, they can be found in restaurants, gas stations, even some grocery stores. The dirty little secret - and not a very well kept one - is that most of the machines pay off, illegally. How did this get started? How much money goes untaxed? What are lawmakers prepared to do? Find out in this seven-part series by clicking here.

West Virginia has a long, sad tradition of political corruption. So, how does West Virginia compare to other states when requiring disclosures from politicians about potential conflicts of interest? How comprehensive are the state's reporting requirements for lobbyists? How have campaign contributions and lobbyist spending affected legislation? Find out in this series.

Poverty ties in with all kinds of social ills - low grades in school, poor nutrition, violence, even asthma and shorter life expectancy. But poverty is about more than money. Poor people can't get at the opportunities and services middle-class Americans take for granted. So the poor often sink into a cycle of day-to-day survival, which often ensures that their children will be poor too. In West Virginia, that's one of every five people. This year's Kids Count Databook compiled a list of opportunities and services from which poor families are often excluded. Inspired by the Kids Count report, the Gazette chose five of these topics to explore in coming weeks in the Community section.

Gazette reporters are analyzing the issues, records and platforms of the candidates for governor in this ongoing series. These stories will explain where the candidates stand on issues ranging from the environment to welfare issues to tort reform and more. Find out what the candidates say, and what they've actually done. This site also includes biographies of the candidates and links to additional information.

Kanawha County is suffering an exodus of people, and the population drain seems to be getting worse. Where are they going, and why are they leaving? Putnam County is growing, but almost 80 percent of the increase comes at Kanawha County's expense. That growth is slowing down as flat land becomes more scarce and houses more expensive. "Valley on the Move" looks beyond the anecdotes and uses data from the IRS to show where people are moving and how much money they take with them.

Doctors inWest Virginia say a "medical malpractice crisis" threatens the state's doctors. Rising insurance rates are driving them to retire early, limit their practices and even leave the state, they contend. Doctors insurers blame the "frequency and severity" of mostly "meritless" lawsuits filed against doctors in the Mountain State. Lawyers say patients deserve compensation when negligent doctors harm them. Who really pays the high price of medical malpractice? This three-day investigative series digs beneath the rhetoric to examine the malpractice climate in West Virginia. Are doctors fleeing the state? Why have insurance rates increased? Are lawsuits to blame? Get some answers from this series.

In some ways, it's hard to believe it's been a year. Then again, it seems like a lifetime since the morning that everything changed in America. To reflect on the year since Sept. 11, 2001, and the challenges to come, the Gazette offers a variety of local stories anchored in the tumultuous state of the nation and world. Issues of our safety, our preparedness, our anger, our sorrow trail through the stories. In addition, readers were asked to recount where they were and how they felt on that fateful day, and they responded generously.

The Mountain State is criss-crossed with all-terrain-vehicle trails. The four-wheel machines are popular among hunters, farmers and those looking for an exciting ride over the state's rugged terrain. But there is a dark side to the ATV proliferation -- an inordinate number of deaths, particularly among West Virginia's children. Why is this happening? Are legislators prepared to pass safety laws after years of debate? And what about the parents and siblings left behind? Their stories provide the framework for this week-long series of articles tracing West Virginia's trail of tears.

"Insurance used to be the thing that stood between people and huge health care bills. Now insurance itself is another huge bill. Or it's just unaffordable. And if you don't have it these days, every day you get up and risk financial disaster." --Sharon Carte, Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP)director. One in four working-age West Virginians is without health insurance. More than 60 percent of uninsured West Virginians have jobs. In the coming months, the Charleston Gazette will explore the reasons why West Virginia's health insurance prices are particularly high. We will introduce you to the people who are uninsured, the people who are teetering on the edge, and the people who are trying to do something about it.

Three years ago, the state started an ambitious program, West Virginia Wheels, to lease used cars to thousands of welfare recipients so they could get to jobs. But West Virginia's poorest citizens didn't get the safe, reliable vehicles the state had promised. Instead, many people wound up with dangerous clunkers while used car dealers made millions. What went wrong? Find out more in "Taken for a Ride," an ongoing Gazette investigation.

Jerry Mezzatesta was one of West Virginia's most powerful politicians. But Mezzatesta's 18-year reign in the state Legislature came to an abrupt end last year. In a series of articles, Gazette reporter Eric Eyre exposed Mezzatesta's lies and abuses, one after another, until the affair culminated with criminal sentences for Mezzatesta and his wife. Earlier this year, the stories won a first place award from the Education Writers Association, and an Investigative Reporters and Editors Medal, the journalism group's top prize for investigative reporting in America. Here's a sampling of Eyre's stories.

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