In 2021, there was a net loss of 735 childcare providers statewide. A $1.4 billion pot of federal relief money is being used to help. But experts say the child care industry will likely worsen, making it harder for Michigan families and the state economy. We want to hear about how Michigan’s childcare crisis is affecting you.

MuckRock, the USA TODAY network and the Documenting COVID-19 project, a pandemic-era journalism project funded by Columbia University’s Brown Institute for Media Innovation, won first place in the 2022 National Headliners Awards for online pandemic coverage or project.

Studies have repeatedly found mandates encourage mask use and slow COVID spread. But politics and lawsuits make them unattractive to policymakers.

Keeping schools open and safe during the COVID-19 pandemic isn’t simple, but one key to safer environments involves upgraded HVAC systems, which help keep air circulating and fresh.

Dr. Robin Trotman had an inkling his Springfield hospital system was experiencing a harbinger of what was to come. It was late June, and CoxHealth was seeing an influx of COVID-19 patients who had already been vaccinated, as the highly contagious Delta variant spread unchecked through the region.

Launched in April 2020, the Documenting COVID-19 project has filed thousands of public records requests and partnered with newsrooms around the country to report out critical accountability stories of the pandemic. Now the effort is expanding even further with MuckRock.

Members of the Indigenous Investigative Collective recently joined MuckRock for a webinar to discuss how they’ve used records laws, data analysis and reporting to understand the impact of COVID-19 on communities, with a particular focus on Navajo Nation, including how a patchwork of transparency laws left key questions unanswered.

In May of 2020, the Navajo Nation reported one of the highest per-capita COVID-19 infection rates in the United States. But even the dire official numbers didn’t tell the full story. The Native American Journalists Associations Indigenous Investigative Collective brought together three newsrooms to launch a public records campaign to dig into how a mix of varying access rules and bureaucratic intransigence have made it impossible to get a full, complete picture of the pandemic.

In May of 2020, the Navajo Nation reported one of the highest per-capita COVID-19 infection rates in the United States. Since that milestone, official data reveal that the Navajo Nation has been one of the hardest-hit populations since the pandemic began. The Navajo Nation boasts the largest population of any Indigenous nation in the United States, and thousands of Navajos live outside the nation, in towns along the border, cities across the country, and in other parts of the world, making it difficult to tally the virus’ impacts on Navajo citizens.

This Thursday, join us for a free training with Documenting COVID-19, the Columbia University-led initiative to help collect, analyze, and report on COVID-19 data and information around the country. This training will focus on information gleaned from analyzing medical examiner data, obtained in partnership with MuckRock through our COVID Public Info work.