Year: 2020

Why the shift in how we pay for healthcare will drive further consolidations of rural healthcare services and what we can do about it May 2020 By Kelly Asche, Research Associate & Marnie Werner, Vice President, Research For a printable version of the report, click here. For a short video providing an overview of this ...

EXCERPT: “There won’t be a Washington County Fair this summer. Or a Freeborn County Fair in southern Minnesota. So far, about 1 in 3 Minnesota county fairs have been canceled for this summer, with more expected to follow in the wake of last week’s cancellation of the Minnesota State Fair. While 4-H is working on alternative ways for members to present ...

EXCERPT: “Spurred by the coronavirus pandemic, federal policy makers are pushing to spend billions of dollars to close gaps in America’s high-speed internet network. There is one big obstacle: Government officials say they don’t have a clear picture of where service gaps exist, meaning parts of the country will be left out when it is ...

Access to healthcare services has been an issue in rural areas for years. Our upcoming report takes a big dive into the reasons why, from the policies to the business models that cause services to be offered in one location but disappear from others.  CRPD research associate and project lead Kelly Asche joins Marnie and ...

EXCERPT: “If there’s one thing the COVID-19 pandemic has done consistently, it has been to highlight weaknesses in various areas, whether that be hospital supplies, food processing businesses or, more locally, broadband access. There have been warnings about all of these weaknesses for years. Local governments and chambers of commerce, for example, have been brainstorming ...

When taking population into account, the rate of COVID-19 cases is just as high, if not higher, in counties outside of the seven-county metro. By Kelly Asche May, 2020 Counties outside of the seven-county metro have some of the highest COVID-19 case rates in the state. But this so far hasn’t translated into a similarly ...

EXCERPT: “For Minnesota rural grocers, finding new ways to operate in the face of COVID-19 is not just a business matter. It’s personal. ‘We know every person that walks through the door here. We are related to many of them and friends with all of them. We want to keep them safe.’ These are the ...

EXCERPT: “Almost 70% of the nation’s more than 1,100 prisons are located outside of metropolitan areas, according to 2017 research by John M. Eason, an associate professor in sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A building boom occurred from 1980 through 1999 as struggling towns eyed prisons as economic salvations. But in many of those same ...

  In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, with unemployment claims in Minnesota hovering at around 20% of the labor force, it might seem strange to talk about a workforce shortage. But just last winter (that seems so long ago, doesn’t it?) that’s exactly what we were talking about. As a follow-up to last year’s ...