How one small Iowa town continues to deal with the effects of a major COVID outbreak
STORM LAKE, Ia. — Emilia Marroquin has experienced firsthand just how much Storm Lake, Iowa, has changed over the past two decades. On a driving tour of the town, she points to a building out the window of her car. “The only Mexican restaurant that was in town was on this corner, [and] there were […]
Meatpacking jobs are attractive to immigrants. COVID made the work even riskier
PERRY, Ia. — Amner Martinez still doesn’t know all the details from when his 74-year-old father Concepcion got dangerously sick with COVID-19 near the beginning of the pandemic. Martinez’s father works at the Tyson Foods plant in Perry, Iowa, the site of an outbreak in spring 2020 that affected 730 workers. https://cpa.ds.npr.org/s4780019/audio/2021/12/se-workers-mixweb.mp3 Listen to this […]
As Iowa Opens Up, COVID-19 Vaccination Rates Continue To Slow
IOWA CITY — On a hot evening at the Broadway Neighborhood Center in Iowa City, home to the University of Iowa, student volunteers set up a mobile COVID vaccination clinic among the apartment complexes that house many immigrant and refugee families. But the clinic struggled to attract residents. https://cpa.ds.npr.org/s4780019/audio/2021/07/se-vaccineupdateweb.mp3 Listen to this story here. Andrew […]
Link Between Mental Illness And Mass Violence Is Weak But Stigma Persists
INDIANAPOLIS — After every mass violence incident, Barbara Thompson sees a pattern. “You almost always hear that the people think that there was something wrong — that this person had a mental illness,” said Thompson, who is the executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness in Indiana. “And so it becomes something really […]