small towns

Community development experts: Strong local leaders key to small-town survival

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Iowans who spend time working on small-town vitality in the state say small, rural communities will not survive urban flight without taking risks or community leaders willing to take them. “I have concerns that places that want to grow are doing it based on a strategy of stand-pat-edness, I guess,” Bill Menner, a former Obama administration U.S. Department of Agriculture state rural development director for Iowa, said. “If you think you can grow your community by staying the same, you’re probably not going to grow your community,” Menner, of Grinnell, said in an interview for an IowaWatch series, Small Town Solutions. He is executive director of the Iowa Rural Health Association. The IowaWatch series reported that Iowa towns with fewer than 5,000 people but remaining vital, despite losing population in some instances, benefitted from one or more factors that included: creative businesses, updated infrastructure, readily available health care, child care, the arts, recreation, a sense of being safe, strong local schools and a sense of community pride.

Health

Non-English speakers get support understanding details of COVID vaccine

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The Midwest is home to tens of thousands of immigrants — including refugees from countries like Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Iraq. It has been a challenge to provide information about COVID-19 and vaccines to those who don’t speak English. 

The Johnson County Public Health Department in eastern Iowa has COVID-19 information available in about a half dozen languages. But Samuel Jarvis, who works for the department, said getting this translated information out during the pandemic can be really hard. “Because the information changes quickly. And really, it’s just — it has to be at a faster pace,” said Jarvis.

opinion

Evans Op-Ed — Question For The Ages: How Will History Judge Us?

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Curiosity has led me to contemplate events like the Civil War, the growing tensions in Europe and America before World War II, the lynching of black people by vigilantes in the South during the first half of the 20th Century, the internment of Japanese-Americans in the Western United States during the 1940s, and the various waves of anti-Jew, anti-Catholic, anti-Italian and anti-Irish thinking in our country.

Iowa prisons

IowaWatch Connection: Sentencing Disparities

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African Americans are just 3.3 percent of Iowa’s population, but they make up 26 percent of the state’s prison population. What’s behind criminal sentencing discrepancies, and what might be done about it?

Blog

Watch Beth Malicki’s KCRG-TV9 Feature on IowaWatch’s special report, ‘Iowa’s Opportunity Gap’

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KCRG-TV9 news anchor Beth Malicki interviewed IowaWatch Executive Director-Editor Lyle Muller about the IowaWatch collaboration with four newspapers, “Iowa’s Opportunity Gap,” for her Nov. 17, 2013, public affairs show, “To The Point.” The 2013 Iowa’s Opportunity Gap project examined gulfs that have grown during 50 years in the home ownership, income, education, jobs and crime rates among white, black and Latino Iowans. You can view the interview here:

Business & Consumer Affairs

Blacks, Latinos Struggle To Raise Homeownership Rates in Iowa

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Home ownership is taken for granted as the default standard of living for many Iowans. But black and Latino homeownership rates have dropped since 1960, an analysis of census data shows. The reasons are explored in the conclusion of the series, “Iowa’s Opportunity Gap,” an IowaWatch collaboration with four Iowa newspapers and I-News.

Databases

Database: Iowa’s Opportunity Gap

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U.S. Census data show where black and Latino Iowans have fallen behind white Iowans when it comes to income, jobs, home ownership and high school and college degrees. IowaWatch obtained an analysis of 50 years of U.S. Census data from the Colorado-based public service journalism organization I-News, a member of the Investigative News Network to which IowaWatch belongs.