EXCERPT: “On the surface, it looked like any other school fundraiser. The kids at Challenger Elementary in Thief River Falls were selling coffee cups, writing thank-you notes, and partnering with local businesses to drum up interest in their cause. But these kids weren’t fundraising for a class trip, a sports team, or any other extracurricular activity. ...

EXCERPT: “As rivers crest in the coming days, some parts of the state are still bracing for flooding, while others are already cleaning up. From Waterville to Cook, parts of the state are dealing with devastating floods and residents are looking for relief. The Salvation Army and American Red Cross are working together to help flood victims.” FULL STORY: ...

EXCERPT: “Rural health care providers, such as CentraCare in Willmar and St. Cloud, are facing some challenging numbers, and not just financially. While 20% of the country’s population lives in rural communities, only 11% of physicians practice in those same areas. Compounding the problem is the fact that only 4% of medical students are from rural ...

EXCERPT: “Juneteenth has been observed for more than 150 years in remembrance of June 19, 1865 when Union soldiers told slaves in Galveston, Texas that they had been freed. Slave owners had kept the news from the slaves that President Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation two years earlier. Following years of activism by 95-year-old ...

EXCERPT: “When University of Minnesota graduate student Allison Lind, in her work with runaway youth, began observing an increase in youth violence in 2020, it led to some questions about what she was seeing. Lind started exploring public data on gun mortality rates from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. What she found took ...

EXCERPT: “Ashley Jacobson has a high risk pregnancy and lives nearly 2 hours from her OB/GYN. Some women in rural Minnesota choose to forgo their doctors appointments entirely because of the distance. CNN’s Omar Jimenez travels to Bigfork, Minnesota to hear how Dr. Johnna Nynas, an innovative OB/GYN at Sanford Health Bemidji, is making care ...

By Marnie Werner, Vice President of Research & Operations In a report we released last February, we talked about an important tool in the work on suicide prevention, 988. The suicide prevention phone number changed in 2022 from its former ten-digit 800 number to the easy-to-remember three digits. As part of our discussion on suicide ...

The Center for Rural Policy & Development and the Citizens League hosted another conversation in their Interconnected series on Wednesday, May 22, 2024. This online conversation covered the housing crisis and challenges across Minnesota – from substantial racial disparities in homeownership to innovative housing solutions, how are communities and organizations across the state working to ...

EXCERPT: “Domestic abuse involving intimate partners is happening at a higher rate in the nation’s rural areas than it is in urban ones, a problem made worse by fewer safety screenings of people who are potentially at risk for abuse, according to studies conducted by a team of researchers at the University of Minnesota. One of ...

On this episode, Kelly Asche, Senior Researcher at the Center for Rural Policy and Development, speaks with Amy Baldwin, Community Development Director at Otter Tail County, about their housing initiative – The Big Build. Housing is one of the biggest problems when it comes to attracting people to Greater Minnesota and fill our workforce needs. ...