— Natrona County, structural drivers of health

Who carries the most weight.

Some Natrona County residents face far more barriers than others. Here's who, by how much, and why it's a health question.

1 in 3
Single-mother households in Natrona County live in poverty
27%
Of Natrona County's workforce is 65 or older, compared with 20.6% statewide [9]
8,000
Latino residents in Natrona County navigate systems and services, often in a new language and without familiar support
1 in 10
Natrona County residents live below the federal poverty line
— Why this is a health page

Poverty, housing instability, and social isolation aren't separate from health, they're some of the strongest predictors of it.

Financial stress alone is linked to worse mental health outcomes, and every barrier on this page, a missed rent payment, a language gap at the clinic front desk, a senior going without care they can't afford, shows up eventually as a health outcome, and often as a more expensive one than it would have been to prevent.

— Wages and the math of making ends meet

The minimum wage covers less than a third.

Wyoming minimum wage
$7.25
What a family of four here needs
$24.85

More than three times as much. [1]

113 hours
A minimum-wage worker needs 113 hours a week to afford rent here, more hours than the week has room for comfortably worked. [2]
1 in 3
Single-mother households in Natrona County live in poverty. [3]
1 in 3
Kids in Natrona County live in a single-parent household. [3]
+25%
Food prices since 2020, with food insecurity up 3%. Qualitative reports say children and seniors are hit hardest. [4]
$62,000
Closer to what a family actually needs to earn here, well above the federal poverty line. More on that in A Safety Net With Too Many Gaps.

Why this belongs on a health page

Economic stress leaves parents and guardians with little capacity to manage home life or catch early warning signs in their kids. Families focused entirely on meeting basic needs often have no bandwidth left to build the kind of environment that supports mental and behavioral health. The financial math above isn't a side issue next to the health data elsewhere on this site, it's frequently the root of it.

— Housing instability

The trend is escalating fast.

Calls to Natrona County's rental and eviction assistance line more than tripled in three years. [5]

90
107
172
287
2021
2022
2023
2024
167
Individuals experiencing homelessness in Casper in Wyoming's 2025 Point-in-Time Count, 44% of them chronically homeless. [6]
47%
Of individuals experiencing homelessness reported a disability, with mental health conditions the most common type. [6]
400 to 500
Natrona County school kids identified as homeless, most of them couch surfing rather than unsheltered. [7]
70% → 39%
High school graduation rates for homeless youth in Natrona County, a collapse that closes off future economic opportunity right when it's most needed. [8]

Why housing is a health issue

A lack of safe, stable housing threatens health, education, and economic outcomes together, not separately. A family doubling up under one roof, an elderly relative absorbing a caregiving burden they can't afford, a teenager couch surfing instead of attending school consistently: each of these is a housing story and a health story at the same time.

No state housing finance agency exists in Wyoming to coordinate funding or scale affordable housing development, which leaves this need almost entirely on the county and its local partners to solve.

— Seniors

Carrying more than they should.

27%
Of Natrona County's workforce is 65 or older, compared with 20.6% statewide. [9]
2nd highest
Natrona County's rate of Alzheimer's and dementia in Wyoming. [9]
2nd highest
Natrona County's rate of suicide among adults 60 and older in Wyoming. [9]

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, available 24 hours a day.

Stretched from both directions

Because Wyoming hasn't expanded Medicaid, many low-income adults age 50 to 64 fall into a coverage gap and may delay care until they qualify for Medicare at 65, meaning problems that could have been caught early often aren't. Medicaid is the primary payer for nursing home care nationally, so reduced funding hits senior care hard, and a year in a nursing home can run roughly $120,000, a cost most families can't absorb without exhausting their savings first. [10]

Supporting two generations at once

Many older Natrona County residents are the sole support across two generations at once, caring for aging parents and adult children simultaneously while inflation strains the household budget and assisted living or in-home nursing care stays out of reach. Cognitive decline can also mask underlying mental health needs, so some of what looks like normal aging is actually an untreated condition going unnoticed.

— Natrona's Latino community
8,000

Latino residents in Natrona County navigate systems and services, often in a new language and without familiar support.

Residents are navigating systems, not failing to navigate them.

Focus groups and interviews for this project found no accessible legal support or Spanish-language navigators in Natrona County, leaving many Latino families to find their own way through systems and services.

A paraphrased pattern from focus group and interview takeaways, April 2026. Not a direct quote from any participant. [12]

Wyoming statewide

Mental health strain in the last year

New Bridge Strategy Wyoming Statewide Survey, February 2026. Statewide, N=545.

Wyoming moms
60%
Residents just getting by financially
62%
Women ages 18 to 54
63%
— Community strength

A community that already invests in itself.

This isn't a community that needs to be convinced investment is worthwhile. It already behaves like one.

1.5x
The U.S. average rate of social associations per 100,000 residents. [11]
140
Nonprofits operate here, more per capita than anywhere else in the state. [11]
40,000
People in a community of about 78,000 have attended or graduated from Casper College. [11]
Since 1974
Residents have voted every four years to tax themselves to fund community infrastructure and services.

These aren't outliers. They're the people the Trust's work is built around.

Every one of these residents is part of why the Trust is rethinking how it works. More on that soon.

Natrona Collective Health Trust

Sources

Numbers are cited inline above with bracketed numbers. This list gives the full source behind each one. Top-line county demographic stats come from FSG analysis citing Kids Count and the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey.

  1. Banner Health Community Health Needs Assessment, 2025, minimum wage vs. living wage
  2. Banner Wyoming Community Health Needs Assessment, 2025, hours needed to afford rent
  3. Kids Count Data Center, Annie E. Casey Foundation, single mothers below poverty and single-parent households
  4. County Health Rankings, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, food prices and food insecurity trend
  5. Community Action Partnership of Natrona County, rental and eviction assistance call volume
  6. Community Action Partnership of Natrona County, 2025 Point-in-Time Count
  7. Wyoming News and Oil City News, youth homelessness and school enrollment data
  8. Wyoming News, Oil City News, and FSG external interviews, graduation-rate data for homeless youth
  9. AARP Healthy Aging Data Report, senior workforce participation, Alzheimer's and dementia rate, suicide rate
  10. Community partner interviews, February 2026, nursing home cost estimate
  11. Community partner interviews, February 2026, and Wyoming Legislative Service Office (2020), nonprofit density and social associations
  12. Focus group and interview takeaways, Natrona Collective Health Trust strategy phase II, April 2026, and the Trust's strategic planning Workshop 1 pre-read, internal documents, no public link