Maha and Appalachia
- Ohio Valley Allies
- 7 hours ago
- 10 min read
MAHA, Industry and Appalachia with Elizabeth Frost
A conversation about how lived experience in overlooked communities shapes how people understand health, industry, and power.
Some stories don’t begin with a decision to step into public life. They begin with realizing that what you grew up around isn’t normal. In this episode of Exposure, Stuart speaks with Elizabeth Frost—Director of MAHA Ohio, former Ohio State Director for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign, co-founder of Independent Force Consulting, and board member of the Coalition of Chemically Impacted Communities. Frost’s story begins in south central Ohio, in a region shaped by overlapping pressures—economic decline, industrial history, and public health crises that are often felt long before they are publicly understood.
The Backstory
Frost grew up between Adams County and the Portsmouth area—neighboring regions with very different economic and industrial footprints. Adams County, as she describes it, is quieter—more rural, less industrial, slower moving. Portsmouth, just miles away, tells a different story. There, the marks of economic transition are more visible, and over time, the opioid epidemic took hold in ways that reshaped families and entire communities. For Frost, this was not something observed from a distance. It was embedded in daily life. Family members, friends, and neighbors were affected—often repeatedly, often across generations. Addiction, loss, and recovery were not isolated events, but woven into the landscape she grew up in.
“It's impossible to live in that area without knowing someone.”
At first, these experiences register as local, even normal. But as Frost describes, there is a gradual shift that happens when you begin to step back from it—when what felt familiar starts to feel abnormal.
That shift does not happen all at once. It builds slowly, shaped by experience, by observation, and by the growing sense that what is happening in one place may be connected to something larger.
Like many small towns across Appalachia facing similar pressures, it can feel like an island—until you realize it isn’t. Many never reach that realization. Many never leave. But that is not Frost’s story.
From Observation to Advocacy
Frost did not set out to work in politics. Her path into advocacy was incremental—volunteering, attending events, meeting people, and gradually becoming more involved.
The inflection point came during a brief exchange with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. At an event, Frost described where she was from and spoke about the opioid crisis in her community—how it unfolded and how it was experienced locally. Moments later, she watched Kennedy reference that conversation on stage, translating her account into a broader public narrative.
That moment marked a turning point for Frost. It made her feel seen by someone outside her community—and not just anyone, but a Kennedy who had spent decades litigating against large corporations she believed had shaped conditions in places like hers. It also reframed her experience: what her family and community had endured was not isolated, but part of a broader pattern that resonated beyond the region. Just as important, the exchange signaled intent. Rather than a routine, performative interaction, Kennedy listened closely and carried her account onto the stage. For Frost, that suggested a level of seriousness and authenticity that helped solidify her move toward advocacy and her alignment with Kennedy. Author’s note: Writing this now, with public opinion around Kennedy sharply divided, this moment reads differently than it did at the time. Through Frost’s perspective in real time, the appeal is clearer: an experience being recognized, translated, and taken seriously on a public stage. Moments like this help explain why many were drawn in, and how MAHA began to cohere as a broader movement. From her vantage point, it is not difficult to see how this could galvanize someone coming from a community deeply affected by the opioid crisis in southern Ohio. It also helps explain why so many were drawn to Kennedy, and how MAHA began to gain momentum.
Rather than a pre-planned career path, her involvement in advocacy and politics developed organically with this one moment being the tipping point. From here she quickly joined the RFK Jr. presidential campaign as Ohio State Director and became involved in MAHA Ohio, continuing to focus on the intersection of health, environment, and community-level experience.
A Pattern Begins to Emerge
Following that shift, a clearer pattern began to take shape in her thinking.
For Frost, the opioid crisis did not stand alone. As she describes it, similar dynamics appeared across different contexts—public health, environmental exposure, and industrial activity. Again, it was Kennedy's record as an environmental attorney that started to sound the alarm bells in Frosts head that began pointing her to this broader realization.
“It's corporate influence… we’re seeing the same tactics used over and over.” fileciteturn2file0
Rather than viewing these as isolated problems, she began to see them as connected patterns shaped by larger systems.
As she describes it, the specifics vary, but the underlying dynamics often feel familiar: decision-making removed from the communities affected, limited access to clear information, and residents navigating consequences they did not create. As awareness grows and affected residents begin to seek accountability, these dynamics often extend into prolonged legal and regulatory processes that can be difficult for individuals and communities to navigate.
That shift—from isolated events to structural awareness—becomes a through-line in how she approaches her work.
Health, Environment, and Overlap
A central theme in this episode is the idea that health outcomes cannot be separated cleanly from environmental and economic conditions.
The conversation moves across multiple topics, including:
The opioid epidemic in southern Ohio
Industrial contamination and environmental exposure
Community responses to events like East Palestine
Concerns around nuclear waste and long-term environmental risk
Frost consistently returns to the idea that these issues are experienced together at the community level—not as separate categories, but as overlapping conditions.
Likewise, she describes MAHA not as a single-issue movement, but as a broad coalition shaped by concerns about food systems, environmental exposure, public health, and access to information. At its core, as she frames it, the focus is less on any one issue and more on a broader concern: how routinely people interact with chemicals that are not fully understood. For some, that concern centers on vaccines; for others, it includes PFAS in water and soil, microplastics in the air, radioactivity from waste sites or natural gas development, flame retardants in textiles, or artificial additives in food. Across these different concerns, the common thread is exposure—often occurring in ways that individuals may not fully understand or meaningfully consent to.
The Gap Between Policy and Lived Reality
What emerges from this conversation is a recurring gap.
Decisions are often made at a national or institutional level, while their consequences are experienced locally—often with limited avenues for meaningful accountability.
Communities like those in the Ohio Valley are frequently navigating outcomes they did not design and may not fully understand at the time they occur.
Frost’s current work, particularly through MAHA Ohio, focuses on closing that gap in practical ways. At the state level, this includes engaging directly with legislators, encouraging them to take local health and environmental concerns seriously, and working to translate community experiences into policy discussions.
That work also involves public-facing efforts—raising awareness, sharing information, and helping residents better understand the conditions affecting their health and environment. A consistent theme is empowerment: creating pathways for people to ask informed questions, participate in decisions, and advocate for their communities.
On the policy side, the emphasis is on approaches that are more community-centered and oriented around informed consent—where individuals and communities have clearer visibility into risks, tradeoffs, and exposures, rather than encountering them after the fact.
In this way, Frost’s work operates at multiple levels at once: local experience, public awareness, and state-level policy—each feeding into the broader effort to align decision-making more closely with the communities it affects.
Closing
Elizabeth Frost is, in many ways, an impressive figure. She has taken personal and community-level hardship and turned it into a path forward—building a career as an organizer, consultant, and advocate rooted in lived experience. Her story offers a clear view into how a public advocate is formed. She was not recruited or positioned into the role. Instead, her circumstances—her experiences, her community, and what she witnessed—shaped her gradually over time. By choosing to stay engaged, she grew into it.
But her story is not singular.
It reflects a broader reality across Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley—communities shaped by systems that have extracted value while leaving long-term consequences behind. Communities where people have navigated overlapping public health crises, environmental exposure, and economic instability, often with limited visibility and limited recourse.
What her story reveals is not just personal resilience, but a pattern: one in which decisions made at a distance can produce lasting effects on people and places, while accountability remains difficult to establish.
It also speaks to something else—how those same systems are often reinforced. Through policy, messaging, and institutions that can make meaningful change difficult to achieve, even when the impacts are widely felt. For those who encounter that machinery up close, it can fundamentally shift how they view those institutions. It also reveals how quickly—and often reflexively—those institutions are defended by those who have not experienced that same level of exposure.
Elizabeth Frost’s path shows what it looks like when someone chooses to engage with that reality directly. And in doing so, her story becomes both personal and representative—one voice among many navigating the same set of conditions, and working, in different ways, to change them.
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Disclaimer: Exposure is an editorial and investigative journalism platform produced by Ohio Valley Allies. The views and opinions expressed by hosts and guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the organization or its affiliates. Statements made by guests reflect their personal experiences, interpretations, and analysis, and should not be construed as assertions made by Exposure. Our mission is to investigate and document the impacts of extractive industries—including oil, gas, petrochemicals, and plastics—through in-depth interviews, research, and storytelling. We aim to expose the truth behind these industries’ operations and consequences using good-faith inquiry, verified sources where possible, and the protections afforded to journalists under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. The content presented in this podcast is intended for informational, educational, and documentary purposes only. It should not be construed as legal advice, a call to action, or an endorsement of any specific viewpoint, protest, or organization. We do not knowingly publish false or defamatory statements. All claims are based on publicly available information, firsthand accounts, expert interviews, or journalistic analysis. Where allegations or critical claims are made, we strive to provide context and sourcing. We are committed to correcting material errors. If you believe a factual inaccuracy has occurred, please contact us at info@ohiovalleyallies.org for timely review and, if warranted, correction. While Exposure covers controversial and high-stakes topics, we do so as journalists seeking transparency, accountability, and the free exchange of ideas—not as advocates for any political party, protest strategy, or legal action.
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