covid-19

The Ford School of Public Policy is a top-ranked public policy school dedicated to preparing diverse leaders to take on society’s most pressing challenges and make transformational discoveries through cutting-edge research. Experts from the Ford...

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic allowed governments to roll out higher surveillance systems without pushback from citizens. Such emergencies “can be moments where governments roll out new invasive forms of data collection and it just becomes the...

Federal lawmakers continue to seek out University of Michigan faculty members to lend their expertise and knowledge to help inform federal policy. In the last year, 13 U-M faculty members and researchers testified at 14 congressional hearings...

Speaking with MLive, Shobita Parthasarathy observed the complexities behind vaccine hesitancy. “We’re letting social institutions, government institutions off the hook the more that we focus on the individual as the source of the hesitancy,” she...

Even as the rates of COVID-19 are dropping, the disease remains a threat. A need remains for COVID testing, and over-the-counter COVID-19 tests are being experimented with in the U.S. But, with these tests being taken at home, the question of how to...

As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on, vaccines have allowed some freedom from the virus. But, patents on the vaccines are preventing others around the world from receiving the life saving shot. In turn, the White House has received pressure to waive...

As vaccine rates increase across the country, interesting patterns are being noticed. Shobita Parthasarathy, professor of public policy, explained the pattern Michigan is experiencing.  “Michigan is sort of a purple, leaning blue, state and you...

The global effort to develop and distribute COVID-19 vaccines has progressed despite myriad challenges. Yet the final step—shots in arms—meets resistance among some that can't easily be overcome by science and supply chains. Vaccine hesitancy—a...

A recent study from researchers at U-M concluded that vaccine hesitancy could impede a goal of herd immunity when it comes to COVID-19. Shobita Parthasarathy, a co-author of the study and director of the Ford School's Science, Technology, and Public...

An article in Nature notes that the National Institutes of Health will invest over $1 billion to research ‘long COVID’ — the long-lasting health effects of a SARS-CoV-2 infection. People who have experienced COVID-19 and its long-term aftermath,...

Noting fierce partisan debates over the science behind COVID-19, Shobita Parthasarathy comments that "These are really values debates masquerading as scientific debates. And putting them into the language of science is bad for science, but it is...

Emphasizing a need to pay attention to marginalized communities, Shobita Parthasarathy says "Giving people more involvement in decision-making about what research is prioritized and how it is carried out could help "align government's values with...

As the Biden administration embarks on its first hundred days, experts from the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy have produced a series of policy briefs on key issues. Download a PDF of this brief or read the web-formatted version below. By...

As the Biden administration embarks on its first hundred days, experts from the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy have produced a series of policy briefs in their areas of expertise. All of the prepared briefs can be downloaded here: Ali on...

"These technologies are least accurate among students who are already marginalized in schools,” Parthasarathy says. She notes that school officials are often ill-equipped to handle the security and privacy of children’s biometric data and ensure the...

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed policymaking biases that have ignored poor and marginalized communities, argues Ford school professor Shobita Parthasarathy. In a paper, Innovation Policy, Structural Inequality, and COVID-19, published in the...

“Disparities, distrust in health systems and other complexities must be explicitly factored into solutions” to the COVID-19 pandemic, Ford School professor Shobita Parthasarathy writes in the latest issue of Nature. Governments around the world are...

As stay-at-home orders expire across the United States, a reliance on antibody testing seems to be a key element of keeping people safe and avoiding a resurgence of COVID-19. Antibody testing is being touted as a way to know whether locked-down...

Ford School professor Shobita Parthasarathy says Americans' consensus belief in the science behind anti-COVID-19 measures is at risk. In an article in Times Higher Education published May 14 entitled "Science ‘risks coronavirus backlash’ as it is...

Since the implementation of the governor’s stay at home order, Ann Arbor’s vehicle traffic has declined markedly. Ann Arbor city council members may consider vehicle street closures in an effort to expand space available for pedestrians and cyclists...

It’s becoming clear that more diagnostic testing is key for the U.S. to stop the spread of COVID-19, re-open the economy, and better manage the next epidemic. Shobita Parthasarathy, director of the Ford School of Public Policy's Science, Technology,...