Consortium on Law and Values

Urban streams often become increasingly polluted as municipalities expand around them. It can be challenging to quantify the benefits of improving their ecological health. A national team of researchers, including Melissa Kenney, PhD, and Hillary Waters, PhD, of the University of Minnesota's Institute on the Environment (IonE), has developed a suite of tools to estimate the economic value of improving water quality in urban streams. Their approach, which is published in a recent …

To mark the end of the federal Public Health Emergency for COVID-19, several members of the Biden-Harris Transition COVID Advisory Board, including Michael Osterholm, PhD, MPH, Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) and co-moderator of the Consortium’s COVID Controversies and COVID Consequences webinar series, collaborated on a guest essay published in the New York Times, titled "…

A panel of leaders in the Minnesota COVID response met for a May 10 webinar to consider the lessons for the next pandemic. The panel -- moderated by Regents Professor and Consortium Chair, Susan Wolf, JD, who co-led the Minnesota COVID Ethics Collaborative (MCEC), and Medical School Vice Dean Ana Núñez, MD, FACP -- included Debra DeBruin, PhD, MCEC co-lead and Director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Bioethics (a Consortium member center); Maria Veronica Svetaz, MD, MPH, family…

Center for Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy (CSTEP) Co-Directors Bonnie Keeler, PhD, and Gabriel Chan, PhD, received a $10 million grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to establish an Environmental Justice Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Center (EJ TCTAC) at the University of Minnesota. The Center will work with underserved, rural, and tribal communities across Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin to help them apply for federal…