Public Health

The National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture, the only Puerto Rican history museum in the United States, continues to fight for racial and financial equity. However, in the wake of the global COVID-19 pandemic that has ravaged Illinois, many museums of color have been feeling the squeeze of the economic hardships caused by it.

As museums across Illinois scramble to stay afloat, the National Public Housing Museum has leveraged its nimbleness to directly aid those whose stories it wishes to preserve, reinforcing its vision for what museums should look like in a post-pandemic world.

What local institutions and archivists are doing to immortalize a disorienting time in Chicago.

2020 Justice Reporting Fellow and 2019 Medill Journalism School graduate Apoorva Mittal interviews survivors of polio from the 1940s and 1950s in examining how Americans' responses to the older epidemic inform perspectives on the current one.

A worker at the Consomed factory tells us about her feelings when she left her family to join the battle against COVID-19.

Without access to basic hygiene in the middle of a pandemic, some inmates are using a hunger strike to call attention to the poor conditions inside Egypt’s overcrowded prisons. Is the government doing enough to keep them safe?

Despite Pride month’s coinciding with the pandemic this year, Sharron Cooks still had plenty to celebrate.

Currently, museums and communities alike are grappling with the dual pandemics impacting African Americans: COVID-19 and social uprisings after the killing of George Floyd.

Science and nature exhibits are rife with buttons to press, touchscreens to swipe, and levers to pull—all the high-touch activities we’re meant to be avoiding.

The coronavirus pandemic has thrust virologist Shi Zhengli into a fierce spotlight. Many have speculated that the pathogen that causes COVID-19, accidentally escaped from her lab. Some have even suggested it could have been engineered there. Claims “that SARS-CoV-2 was leaked from our institute totally contradicts the facts,” Shi said. “It jeopardizes and affects our academic work and personal life.”

Many health experts say it's clear who should get the first shots: health care workers around the world, then people at a higher risk of severe disease, then those in areas where the disease is spreading rapidly, and finally, the rest of us.

As Southern Illinois University prepares to welcome thousands of students to campus in August amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the University Museum has had to put exhibitions and in-person programming on hold as they pivot their plans for the fall semester.