INRPHA Annual Meeting kicks off with this virtual panel discussing potential implications of the Rural Health Transformation Program for U.S. rural working-age and older adults. Register: buff.ly/BpSVKHN @pmkelly.bsky.social @smonnat.bsky.social @r-thombs.bsky.social @ruralhealth.bsky.social

"Human beings crave a narrative. We want our lives to be about something. W/out an anchoring story, we're unmoored. Work means nothing other than a paycheck. Gov't means nothing other than keeping prices low or gaming it for profit... Kindness and community are for suckers."

COVID-19 masking requirements and activity restrictions were linked to increased gun violence during 2020-2021. Learn more in this new @maxwellsu.bsky.social #SULerner brief: surface.syr.edu/lerner/290/

We deserve to live until we are old. substack.com/home/post/p-... #publichealth #demography #epidemiology #healthpolicy

FUNDING ALERT - the Interdisciplinary Network on Rural Population Health and Aging invites proposals for pilot research on the drivers of rural health & aging trends and disparities. Proposals are due by Friday, April 10. The RFP can be accessed at drive.google.com/file/d/1YESp...

Rural America is often talked about as if it’s one place with one story. It isn’t. Rural demographers break down 6 commonly-held myths about rural America, and why getting them wrong has real consequences (thread) ⬇️ buff.ly/q9pGEtI

Local democracy is holding strong, but rural communities are falling behind on voter engagement, new survey of Michigan officials shows buff.ly/5p6D4WR

Congrats @bethmacy.bsky.social!

Is AI supplementing care or replacing it? Among U.S. adults who use AI for mental health support, 28% now visit human mental health professionals less often. Learn more in this new @maxwellsu.bsky.social #SULerner data slice: surface.syr.edu/lerner/288/

“The food system perspective is really important here. It's not just about how do they pay for labor costs and compete, but why do we have this system where so little of the money is going to farmers,” says Professor Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern. @cprmaxwell.bsky.social @sulernercenter.bsky.social

New in The Conversation from Tim Slack and @smonnat.bsky.social Shannon Monnat: "6 myths about rural America: How conventional wisdom gets it wrong" 1/ theconversation.com/6-myths-abou...

Our Center for Policy Research alumni do awesome things! Congrats, Graham!

Check out my article in the @us.theconversation.com today, co-authored with Tim Slack. 6 myths about rural America: How conventional wisdom gets it wrong theconversation.com/6-myths-abou...

Healthcare is broken, example 1,350. Consolidation is driving out all smaller outfits, leaving pharmacy deserts. Appalachia takes it in the shorts, again.

“Optimism driven by political satisfaction does not necessarily track with objective indicators of well-being. There is little evidence that conditions in most rural communities are improving,” says Professor @smonnat.bsky.social. @sulernercenter.bsky.social @cprmaxwell.bsky.social

"While optimism may reflect short-term satisfaction with political leadership, the administration's policy choices mean that most rural communities are unlikely to see improved economic and health outcomes in the near future" says @smonnat.bsky.social. www.newsweek.com/rural-americ...

Not an expert, just a writer, but yes. While not specifically about misinformation, I think the work of Jennifer Karas Montez, et al on state policies is relevant to the information environment. I see links all the time in my reporting. www.milbank.org/quarterly/ar... c: @smonnat.bsky.social

In a new Demography article with @marasheftel.bsky.social we document the aging of the undocumented immigrant population. Half of undocumented Asians and one in five undocumented Mexicans are 50 or older, and now entering older adulthood without a safety net. read.dukeupress.edu/demography/a...

Free and subsidized food programs are complex, expensive, and ineffective for older adults. Our experts break down the key limitations of community-based food programs for #olderadults in the final brief from our #SUFoodInsecuritySeries: surface.syr.edu/lerner/283/. @maxwellsu.bsky.social

Who could've predicted this? @brianralexander.bsky.social www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

Wow! How the US labor market has changed - Large drops in shares of farming & blue collar jobs Big increases in shares of professional and service jobs https://conversableeconomist.com/2024/12/12/the-changing-us-labor-market/

You cannot effectively delete what is posted publicly on Bluesky. Data scientists (not affiliated with Bluesky) and commercial companies capture it all live, every comma and em dash. Anything said in the heat of the moment could follow you to a job interview ten years from now. Capisce?

In our Sept issue learn how Covid-19 changed the effects of county contexts on mortality: bit.ly/45Y8noc Policy brief: bit.ly/4nqPLDc By Jennifer Karas Montez @smonnat.bsky.social Emily E. Wiemers Douglas A. Wolf Xue Zhang @cprmaxwell.bsky.social @syracuseu.bsky.social @cornelluniversity.bsky.social

If I want snarky and unhelpful commentary, I will make actual human friends...

Congratulations to CPR Director, @smonnat.bsky.social on being elected president of the Rural Sociological Society (RSS)! RSS promotes knowledge about rural people and places and seeks to enhance the quality of life and environment in rural communities. www.maxwell.syr.edu/news/article...

Senate committee rejects NIH cuts, boosts budget by $400 million | STAT www.statnews.com/2025/07/31/n...

One reason so many American hospitals are struggling? Investors buy them up, then suck them dry, charging such high rents that services are gutted. Reveal explores what happened to one Louisiana hospital when Medical Properties Trust came to town. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Unless policymakers regulate the food industry, the 'Make America Healthy Again' movement is just a public relations campaign, says CPC Fellow Lindsey Smith-Taillie. www.seattletimes.com/opinion/maha...

Daniel Baldwin accidentally walked into my SU Intro to Sociology class in 2018, thinking he was there for a guest lecture for a media class. A student had a seizure in class while he was there.

I played craps with Flava Flav at South Point casino in Vegas.

After 20+ years of running at full speed in academia, I’m stepping into a new phase—less Bear, more Beef. A reflection on ambition, burnout, and what it means to let go of prestige to make room for purpose. Check out my new post on The Food Archive: shorturl.at/uyVsC

Written by the bipartisan co-chairs of the Aspen Institute rural health meeting I attended a couple of weeks ago. It summarizes one of the takeaway messages from our report - cuts to Medicaid will be devastating for rural health care and rural health. www.usnews.com/opinion/arti...

The Graduate Center community deeply mourns the passing of Prof. Emeritus Richard Alba, a pathbreaking demographer who bucked conventional ideas about how immigrants assimilate into and impact mainstream U.S. culture www.gc.cuny.edu/news/memoria...

RFK Jr. wants to Make America Healthy Again. But he's ignoring the country's leading cause of preventable deaths: smoking.

Durbin to Bhattacharya: "I can't understand it. I disagree w/ this admin on so many things. But this is the one that really gets to me personally. To think this nation would walk away from medical research. For God's sake...cancer, your budget requests a 38% cut to the National Cancer Institute"

Whoops! Damn data again. We really gotta stop tracking this stuff so people can lie more freely. "American life expectancy in 1960 was almost ten years shorter than it is today: 69.7 years. And the leading causes of death were, in fact, chronic diseases." www.npr.org/2025/06/06/n...

JAMA Forum on the proposed NIH budget… jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

We need you--every single one of you-- in the US to stand up, right now, and fight for NSF, NIH, USGS, NASA, USDA. Agencies Congress empowered to serve the public with impactful science and innovation. This is not a drill. This is our last stand. After this, there will be nothing left to fight for.

Thinking about devastating cuts to NSF: US gov-funded science has been the engine upon which most of the tech wealth was generated. But the oligarchs (currently hoarding much of that $) think it’s their own brilliance & not the accident of standing close to the scientific engine that made them rich.

The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 created the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. I reread it today; nothing in the law allows a president to defund PBS and NPR. In fact, Congress specifically sought to insulate public media from political pressure.

Deaths from heart disease down 75%, that’s NIH. Deaths from stroke down 75%, that’s NIH. HIV/AIDS no longer a death sentence, that’s NIH. 99% of FDA approved drugs in the last decade, that’s NIH. Please show this video to anyone who doesn’t understand why the NIH is so important.

CDC WONDER has been down for over a week. Another casualty of DOGE, or just a temporary maintenance issue?

I hate to be so prescient, but this is exactly what we said they were doing

So true. US universities are top notch, and magnets for talent that strengthen the US economy, *because* the US made a policy decision to invest in research. What the gov’t really does is run a competition to let university scientists compete for grant funding to do research that helps society.

By slashing teams that gather critical data, the Trump administration has left the federal government with no way of understanding if policies are working — and created a black hole of information whose consequences could ripple out for decades.

Also, universities aren't 'dependent' on federal funds. It's a partnership between the government and universities to fund pathbreaking health, scientific, engineering, and countless other innovations, and just as importantly, to train the scientific workforce. We're all sunk if this collapses.