The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work. With the advent of an infectious disease outbreak, epidemiologists and public health officials quickly try to forecast deaths and infections using complex computer models. But with a brand new virus like the one that causes COVID-19, these estimates are […]

Making sure rural areas are counted accurately is a challenge in the best of times. In 2020, the U.S.Census Bureau’s operations have had to adapt. For most people, replying to the 2020 census is surprisingly quick and easy. Except when it’s not. And rural areas are particularly prone to conditions […]

This article was originally published by Ohio Valley ReSource. Health officials and researchers say the science is clear: face masks can help reduce the spread of the coronavirus. Yet in the Ohio Valley, not all elected officials are in agreement on whether to mandate measures such as the use of face masks […]

Regina Fargis didn’t know what to do. Fargis runs Summit Hills — a health and retirement community in Spartanburg, South Carolina, that offers skilled nursing, activities and communal meals for its residents, most of whom are over 60, the highest-risk category for coronavirus complications. In South Carolina, more than a […]

Prison overcrowding has been quietly tolerated for decades. But the pandemic is forcing a reckoning. Jason Thompson lay awake in his dormitory bed in the Marion Correctional Institution in central Ohio, immobilized by pain, listening to the sounds of “hacking and gurgling” as the novel coronavirus passed from bunk to […]

Rural areas seemed immune as the coronavirus spread through cities earlier this year. Few rural cases were reported, and attention focused on the surge of illnesses and deaths in the big metro areas. But that false sense of safety is now falling apart as infection rates explode in rural areas […]