In the News
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October 21, 2025
“There hasn’t been a lot of polling, and given the breakdown of the primary and the endorsements and fundraising, Sheffield is the favorite. Kinloch was in a tough position in one debate using the opportunity to try and throw the kitchen sink and change the dynamic. It’s tough to do in an hour,” said Aaron Kall, director of U-M Debate, on the recent debate between Detroit mayoral candidates Mary Sheffield and Solomon Kinloch Jr.
Bridge Detroit -
October 21, 2025
RxKids, the Flint-based cash aid program for new parents, is set to expand after the state legislature approved $270 million to expand it into more Michigan communities over the next three years. “It’s really exciting during this time, when it seems like everything is polarized, to have a program that’s getting support across the aisle,” said RxKids co-director Luke Schaefer, professor of public policy and social work and faculty director for Poverty Solutions.
The Detroit News -
October 21, 2025
“When a government erects barriers to comprehensive reproductive care, it doesn’t just cause more death and suffering for women and their families. Such policies are often a first step in the gradual decline of democracies,” wrote Seda Saluk, assistant professor of women’s and gender studies. “Restrictions on reproductive freedoms often necessitate other kinds of restrictions to enforce and maintain them.”
The Conversation -
October 20, 2025
Transferring the algorithm of TikTok’s content-recommendation system from China’s ByteDance to its new U.S. owners is more complicated than a single set of copy-paste code, said Nicole Ellison, professor of information: Such systems were often governed by “very complicated computational formulas that look at many, many, many data points about an individual” to predict what type of content they will engage with or enjoy. Even if ByteDance offered “the whole code base and said, ‘Yep, it’s yours,’ if it didn’t come with any people who were involved in creating that code base, it would be very, very hard to make good use of it,” said Paul Resnick, professor of information.
Business Insider -
October 20, 2025
“Right now, hospice prescribing is a black box. Medications covered under the hospice benefit are not reported to Medicare, so we have almost no visibility into what patients are receiving. That makes it impossible to monitor prescribing safety or quality on a national level,” said Lauren Gerlach, assistant professor of psychiatry, who found that hospice drugs commonly handed out to people with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia might be hastening their deaths.
U.S. News & World Report -
October 20, 2025
“There is the concern of further politicization of public health if Republican governors do not join this effort,” said Anand Parekh, chief health policy officer at the School of Public Health, about the formation of the Governors Public Health Alliance, an independent hub for governors and public health leaders to monitor disease outbreaks and prepare for emergencies.
The Washington Post -
October 17, 2025
“We certainly hope by the spring, that we have much higher water levels because we get a lot of migratory fish that come up here all the way from Lake Huron. They come up into the Flint River to spawn and things, and they need that water to get up here,” said Heather Dawson, professor of biology at UM-Flint, on the low water levels in the Flint River.
WNEM Saginaw/Flint -
October 17, 2025
As tech companies pump hundreds of billions of dollars into infrastructure for artificial intelligence, proposals to build data centers are facing growing opposition due to concerns about land preservation, noise pollution, and data centers’ water and electricity use. “It feels like there’s been a real shift over the last six months or so in terms of the public just becoming aware of what data centers are — and becoming increasingly skeptical,” said Ben Green, assistant professor of information.
The Washington Post -
October 17, 2025
“Infectious diseases don’t care about state borders. They spread as people come and go across states, so even if one state falls below what we call ‘herd immunity levels of protection’ — which we get through vaccination rates — this would have impacts far beyond that state,” said Paula Lantz, professor of public policy and of health management and policy, on the growing trend of Republican-leaning states turning away from vaccine mandates.
U.S. News & World Report -
October 16, 2025
“There’s a way that the creator sharing a personal story is something that was different than most other legacy media at that time. It’s very intimate, it’s very off the cuff. There’s a warmth to it,” said Hollis Griffin, associate professor of communication and media, about the countless LGBTQIA+ artists who took to YouTube to share their sexuality and gender identity journeys in the early 2010s.
Detroit Free Press
