Researchers at the University of Minnesota College of Pharmacy partnered with the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) to map out where pharmacies are across Minnesota. 

The researchers mapped pharmacies, identified challenges communities face when they lose a pharmacy and informed people about the problem since 2020. As they continue their research, the group hopes to educate the public about pharmacy closures.

Lindsay Sorge, the senior strategic initiatives lead on the project and an assistant professor in the College of Pharmacy, said MDH and the Minnesota Board of Pharmacies compiled a list of pharmacies around the state to refer to and confirm they were open to ensure the map is accurate.

“We called pharmacies and said, ‘Are you still open? You’re not coming up on our pharmacy list,’ and sometimes found they moved across the street,” Sorge said. 

Sorge said they also did this to confirm the pharmacies were brick-and-mortar stores open to the community and not mail-order pharmacies or pharmacies inside hospitals.

Moving forward, team members are working to find ways to share the map with others, Sorge said. 

“It’s not just like detecting it and leaving it and walking away,” Sorge said. “It’s like understanding and then picking up on the advocacy piece.”

Sarah Westberg, associate dean of professional affairs and professor in the College of Pharmacy, said pharmacies tend to close for financial reasons. She said pharmacies do not get adequate reimbursement from insurance companies for medications and staffing. 

“Many times, insurance companies and pharmacy benefit managers are reimbursing pharmacies at a rate that is less than it costs them to dispense the medication,” Westberg said. 

Chrystian Pereira, an associate professor at the College of Pharmacy, said the low reimbursement rates make it difficult for pharmacies to stay in business. 

Pereira said when mapping pharmacy gaps around the state, they needed to use different ways to measure gaps in rural versus urban areas. 

“One of the things we did in our project was coming up with a definition to fit those different places,” Pereira said. “And then we didn’t measure the distance like if you put a ruler on a map from one place to another place, we measured your traveling distance. So how far would someone have to drive to get to a pharmacy and then we let that kind of distance create our definition.”

Traveling five miles in urban areas to get to a pharmacy is different from traveling five miles in a rural area because things are more spread out, Pereira said. It is more common to travel longer distances for day-to-day needs in rural areas.

Westberg said pharmacies provide additional care like vaccinations and clinics outside of selling medications to help the community and to make a profit aside from selling prescriptions.

“A pharmacy is so much more than picking up a bottle of pills, they are the most accessible healthcare provider, usually on the entire healthcare team,” Westberg said. People go to pharmacies to ask questions about their situation to determine if they need to go to the emergency room or if they can treat themselves at home or to get feedback on what medications they need.”

Westberg said a large percentage of people go to pharmacies for vaccinations. When pharmacies close, people lose access to those additional services.

“You take that pharmacy out of there and deliver medication to the doorstep or in the mailbox of a patient, that doesn’t replace all those other services,” Westberg said.

A study at the University of Minnesota examining the financial burdens of medical services on cancer survivors revealed medical equipment like wheelchairs and hearing aids made up the majority of out-of-pocket costs.

The study also examined the costs of medical services including inpatient and outpatient care, prescription drugs and physical therapy.

Medical equipment is less likely to be covered by insurance than other forms of care Arjun Gupta, a professor at the University Medical School, said.

For prescription medications, insurance might cover 95% of the cost leaving the patient to pay the remaining 5%, Gupta said. The average cost-sharing rate for medical equipment is 39%, meaning patients spend more on equipment out of pocket.

Patients turn to other ways to get their equipment like Facebook Marketplace, Gupta said.

“It’s so challenging that people just say, ‘Screw it. I’m gonna buy it,’” Gupta said.

The amount of cancer survivors in the United States is increasing due to improved medical care, Gupta said. At the same time, treatments like chemotherapy can leave patients more vulnerable even after being in remission.

“We’ve seen that people are definitely living longer and longer, which is good, but they also have increased rates of functional impairment,” Gupta said.

Roughly one-fourth of cancer survivors report mobility limitations so they need to use medical equipment to get around, Gupta said.

Helen Parsons, another researcher specializing in cancer survivorship at the University Medical School, said the administrative process of getting medical equipment is tedious and a motivator for patients to seek equipment elsewhere.

“It’s not just as simple as writing a prescription,” Parsons said. “There’s additional paperwork and referrals and sending things back and forth. It’s very frustrating for these survivors.”

Getting the equipment is not as simple as getting a prescription for medicine, Parsons said. The process usually involves working with multiple people in the health care system and getting the equipment could take anywhere from a few weeks to months.

Depending on how much insurance covers or if they purchase it online, the equipment can cost anywhere from a few hundred dollars to several thousand if patients need specialized equipment, like a motorized scooter, Parsons said. 

The cost of equipment forces patients to make difficult decisions, Parsons said. 

“People need to make really challenging decisions between paying for that needed equipment and other types of living and housing expenses, which can be a really tough trade-off,” Parsons said. 

Even small but necessary purchases like adult diapers contribute to the financial burden, Gupta said.

Parsons said there is a new opportunity for policy to be put in place to help cancer survivors and remove administrative burdens that deter people from getting the equipment they need.

While the administrative hurdles patients need to jump through to get equipment are difficult, healthcare providers are doing their best within the system, Parsons said.

Origami is a traditional Japanese art form where people create intricate designs by folding paper, but the technique can also keep people alive. 

Science and engineering professor Richard James and Huan Liu,  one of his doctoral students who is now a postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology, used origami to develop a brain stent prototype. Brain stents are devices implanted in the brains of people with high-risk conditions of the brain arteries, somewhat like a retaining wall.

Brain stents are used to treat brain aneurysms and maintain blood flow in narrowing blood vessels.

James said origami structures are used in objects we encounter frequently. Space-saving products, like a collapsible canoe, use origami to fold up into a different, more convenient shape.

The Weisman Art Museum on the Twin Cities campus was designed with origami-like qualities, James said, as the curves of the metal come together to form sharp angles.

The brain stents in their research use shape-memory materials, or materials that can be bent but return to their original shape, James said. This material along with origami design helps with the tedious process of inserting a brain stent. 

Brain stents are inserted through an artery in the leg and guided through the artery to the brain by a guidewire, James said. The process is monitored on an X-ray to see where the stent is and lasts about three hours.

“Origami design is ideal for (brain stents) because you can take large objects and you can deform them,” James said. “You design the folding pattern so it can be squished up into a small diameter, and you can also make it out of shape-memory and material.”

James said the stent shrinks to fit inside the artery and expands once it reaches the aneurysm.

According to Liu, the shapes of different aneurysms are unique in shape, so origami is useful to create a stent that fits exactly. 

“I can use my origami structure to approximate the shape of the aneurysm so that it can fit the aneurysm perfectly and reduce the risk of aneurysm rupture,” Liu said. 

Liu uses curved folds, as opposed to straight lines like those used for a paper airplane, for safer insertion of the stents. 

“Linear origami creates sharp corners which are dangerous for treating aneurysms,” Liu said. “But for (curved origami), I can get a smoother surface.”

James said Liu calculates how to fold the material for the stent’s design. 

“It’s not like recreational origami where you try things and see how it folds. It’s much more mathematical than that,” James said. “You design it on the computer using mathematical theory. You designed it ahead of time and then, sure enough, it folds up the way you expected it to.”

Liu said using origami in other areas of engineering is promising and opens up new possibilities for design. She and James also worked on developing a new model for vertical-axis wind turbines to make them more efficient using curved origami designs. 

Origami structures are also promising in the world of space exploration, James said, as the capsules attached to rockets are very small but need to fit many things into a small space. 

“Our main focus is to develop mathematical methods for general use with many applications in mind,” James said.

The University of Minnesota’s Masonic Institute for the Developing Brain (MIDB) is strategizing ways to address the shortage of mental health workers in Greater Minnesota and the growing need for pediatric mental health care, according to a press release from MIDB. 

Twenty-eight percent of 8th to 11th grade students reported experiencing emotional, behavioral or mental health issues lasting longer than six months, according to the Minnesota Department of Health’s 2022 Student Reports.

According to the Minnesota Center for Rural Policy and Development, only 18% of mental health providers work in Greater Minnesota, where nearly half of Minnesota youth under 18 live. Due to the lack of mental and behavioral health care in rural Minnesota, many children and families wait months to receive care, sometimes having to take off work and school to drive to the Twin Cities to see specialists.

Jessica Simacek, the program’s principal investigator and director of the TeleOutreach Center, said there is already a shortage of providers around the state. She added the problem is worse in Greater Minnesota where communities are smaller and there are fewer mental and behavioral healthcare providers. 

“It’s not unique to Minnesota, but we certainly feel it a lot,” Simacek said. 

The average wait time for an autism evaluation is about 18 months statewide, and wait times for early intervention services are around nine months, Simacek said. 

“So you add that together, and that’s years that kids are waiting for things that would be supportive to them,” Simacek said. “And that’s not unique to only children with autism.”

Simacek said it can be difficult for primary care providers to treat children with autism, attention-deficit disorders or other behavioral and mental health issues because they do not have the proper guidance or supervision to give informed treatment and recommendations to their patients.

According to Simacek, the program strives to tackle this disparity in a few ways, both by training primary care providers and developing telehealth programs to eliminate wait times. The program hosts online training sessions led by different healthcare professionals to help guide providers.

“So the supervision piece where the child is still receiving 100% in-person care, but the person supporting them is being supervised or trained in a way that involves telehealth,” Simacek said.

This allows providers in rural areas to consult with another professional about how to care for a patient when they may not know the best course of action, Simacek said.

Emily Borman-Shoap, director of the pediatrics residency program at the University’s Medical School leading a program incorporating specialized mental health training into the primary clinics, said tools like these will help providers gain confidence in starting treatment plans, such as referring them to a therapist for mental health concerns.

Simacek said another strategy is using telehealth to provide supplemental support for families with newly diagnosed children while waiting for their in-person care to start. 

“There’s a lot of families we’ve supported who live in greater Minnesota who drive their children up to two hours once a week to access a speech-language pathology appointment,” Simacek said. “They might have to take time off work, or time away from school to do that. So another consideration is finding ways to help increase someone’s access to care where they’re experiencing challenges.”

Borman-Shoap said using telehealth can also help with patients’ comfort. 

“Some kids and teenagers do quite well with telehealth,” Borman-Shoap said. “Some do better, I would say, because they can be in the comfort of their own home.”

Others still find it harder to connect with a therapist over a video call, so telehealth should not be the end all be all, Borman-Shoap said. This is another reason why integrating mental and behavioral health care into primary care remains an important solution.

Borman-Shoap said finding ways to get children treatment for their conditions earlier generally prevents them from needing inpatient treatment. 

“Some people just have a significant illness that’s going to end up needing inpatient treatment, even with really good support,” Borman-Shoap said. “But there are a big number of patients where if we were able to put high-quality care in place early, then hopefully we’ll never get to the point that they need inpatient.”

Tucked in the basement of the Mayo Building on the University of Minnesota’s Twin Cities campus sits a detached, beating pig’s heart floating in clear liquid. 

Graduate and undergraduate students surround it, observing the heart directly or through screens displaying a live stream of its insides. 

Visible Heart Laboratories (VHL) reanimates more than 200 hearts a year, mainly from animals, laboratory director Paul Iaizzo said. Occasionally the lab receives human hearts to work on, having reanimated 98 human hearts as of February. 

The lab also works on other organs, like kidneys and lungs, Iaizzo said. 

VHL began in 1997 when Iaizzo and his coworkers started studying mammalian hearts, or hearts belonging to mammals, according to the lab’s website. It is a collaboration between the University and Medtronic to research the normal functions of living organisms and their body parts.

The lab has a rich history, Iaizzo said. The first battery-powered pacemaker was invented in the same space in the late 1950s by University researcher Earl Bakken. The walls are adorned with photos of past researchers who used the space before VHL, alongside past and current students who have worked in the lab. 

The heart sits inside a tub called the Visible Heart apparatus and is partially submerged in a clear liquid blood substitute called Krebs-Henseleit. The heart is hooked up to machines mimicking arteries and veins to control the amount of blood flowing into the heart, and a heater helps to keep the blood substitute at body temperature allowing the liquid to oxygenate. 

The blood substitute lacks red blood cells, which means the heart can only beat for a few hours, Iaizzo said. 

“The clear solution allows us to see what’s happening inside the heart,” Iaizzo said.

The researchers place cameras inside and around the heart to see the insides of a working heart to understand its anatomy, Iaizzo said. 

Occasionally, the lab livestreams its research to viewers worldwide so others can benefit from their findings, Iaizzo said. 

The pig heart is much bigger than a human heart but is structurally similar to a human one, Iaizzo said. This means research conducted on a pig heart can translate to healthcare advancements for human medicine. 

Down the hall, VHL houses a library of preserved hearts dating back to 2000. The hearts sit in jars on shelves lining the walls of the room. 

Iaizzo said because VHL is part of an academic institution, anyone can come in and look at the hearts in the library to further their research. 

The laboratory also develops free augmented reality tools for educational use so students can better understand the heart’s structure, Iaizzo said. 

“The first time a student works on an actual body is very different from working on a cadaver,” Iaizzo said. “This gives students the chance to see what a living body looks like because that is visually more similar to what surgery looks like.”

VHL also makes 3D-printed replicas of the hearts in the library, Iaizzo said. 

“Every heart is different, so being able to show students models of different hearts is beneficial,” Iaizzo said. 

The 3D models can also be used to explain surgery to patients and their loved ones so they have a better understanding of the procedure, Iaizzo said.

“Being able to show families exactly what will happen is comforting to them,” Iaizzo said. 

Amanda DeVos, a doctoral student studying biomedical engineering, said working in VHL gave her an advanced understanding of how the heart and other organs function.

“What I learn working on one organ can end up informing my work on another,” DeVos said. 

DeVos said the experiences she gained at VHL are unique and difficult to replicate elsewhere. 

“Every day is different and we’re always working on something new,” DeVos said.

University of Minnesota researchers are studying how to remove Perfluoroalkyl and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS), also known as forever chemicals, from the environment.

According to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, PFAS are a group of synthetic chemicals used in non-stick cookware, stain-resistant carpeting, firefighting foam and other everyday items. The chemicals are made up of carbon and fluorine, which create a strong bond that makes it extremely difficult to degrade in the environment.

On Jan. 25, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency banned PFAS in 11 products including carpeting, cleaning products and fabric treatments. This is the first step in the agency’s efforts to fully ban PFAS chemicals in Minnesota.

Bo Hu, a researcher in the University’s Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering department, is collaborating with researchers from University departments to engineer plants to suck through their roots, in a process called phytoremediation, and remove environmental contaminants like PFAS from the soil.

PFAS is found in some fertilizers, especially biosolids made from treated sewage, Hu said. Farmers use these fertilizers regularly making PFAS contamination widespread.

However, the concentration of PFAS in soil is low. According to the National Institutes of Health, PFAS concentration in soil is less than one microgram, the smallest unit in the metric system, for every 237 kilograms.

Hu said most research about PFAS remediation is centered on removing the chemicals from drinking water instead of soil.

“We already have a good methodology to remove PFAS from the drinking water, but removing the PFAS from the soil is actually more of a concern from the research perspective,” Hu said.

Hu’s study focuses on crop species, such as wheat and corn, to help tackle concentrations of PFAS on farms.

Michael Smanski, a researcher from the Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Biophysics, genetically modifies the plants to uptake PFAS chemicals, while Hu screens different plants for their ability to uptake PFAS.

“People have experience in growing these plants, so we can operate easily on a larger scale,” Hu said.

Riley Lewis, a graduate student at the University working on the study with the Department of Chemistry, said he helps create small particles that facilitate the uptake of PFAS into the plants. He said PFAS does not mix with water easily, which makes phytoremediation difficult.

“They end up getting stuck to the soil particles and just kind of stay in the soil and don’t get into the water, which is what the plants actually kind of take up,” Lewis said. “Our goal is to make these particles that kind of help free the PFAS from the soil, to allow them to move up into the plant system.”

The study works with two kinds of small particles that could trap PFAS chemicals inside them, Lewis said. They examine both carbon-based and silica-based particles to determine which particular structure is better for the uptake of PFAS chemicals.

“The silica-based nanoparticles are more structured. They have kind of a wiffle ball structure,” Lewis said. “So hopefully the PFAS get inside of that structure where they kind of exist, and then can move up into the plants.”

The particles used in the study are positively charged, attracting the negatively charged PFAS particles to them, Lewis said. The PFAS chemicals then get trapped inside the particles and are more easily absorbed by the plants. 

The technique is passive, meaning farmers do not need to do extra work to help remove PFAS from soil, Lewis said. 

Another researcher at the University, Jiwei Zhang, is working with fungi to break down PFAS chemicals by examining how fungi respond to PFAS chemicals. 

Zhang said his lab grows fungi on PFAS chemicals to evaluate the organisms’ responses to their PFAS exposure. 

Zhang said PFAS chemicals are toxic to animal and plant cells and bacteria. 

“But what we found is the fungi are quite resilient to these PFAS chemicals,” Zhang said. “Instead of killing the fungal species, what we’re finding is that the PFAS chemicals are actually stimulating the growth of the fungi.”

The fungi have a 50-80% absorption rate of the PFAS chemicals in the laboratory, Zhang said. 

The fungal groups that responded best to the chemicals are white rot but not brown rot fungi, Zhang said. These species are commonly found in forests. 

The use of fungi in PFAS remediation could potentially keep soil and water clean, Zhang said.

“ Fungal systems…can provide us some fundamental knowledge to create filtering systems that can be used for treating the storm waters or for treating the impact to the soil environment,” Zhang said.

Correction: A previous version of this article stated fungal groups that responded best to chemicals are white rot and brown rot fungi. It is white rot fungi that respond best, not brown rot fungi. 

A new study from the University of Minnesota’s College of Science and Engineering (CSE) found it can use sensors to detect and remove plastic debris from the Mississippi River, according to a press release from CSE.

Mohammadali Olyaei, the lead author of the study, said before this study, most research focused on debris in oceans as opposed to rivers and lakes, but monitoring freshwater bodies could help keep oceans clean.

“The majority of the plastics come from the rivers to the oceans,” Olyaei said. “So if we can detect the plastics in the rivers and find a way to remove them, we can eventually have a cleaner environment and cleaner ocean.”

The Mississippi River flows directly, bringing any debris, into the Gulf of Mexico, which President Donald Trump recently renamed the Gulf of America. 

According to a study from the United Nations Environment Programme, plastic makes up 75% of the debris in the river. Paper and lumber make up 9%, metal makes up 7%, glass makes up 5% and personal protective equipment makes up 2%. 

Olyaei said researchers on the study used water from the Mississippi collected at St. Anthony Falls Laboratory and used sensors to measure the reflectance, or the light reflected off an object, of any plastic debris in the water. Once the sensors could distinguish plastics in the water from other materials, they could then categorize the different types of plastic using measurements and wavelengths detected by the sensors. 

Researchers added sediments to the water and created waves in the lab to mimic the river conditions to test whether the sensors could find plastics in a more natural environment, Olyaei said. 

“Using some machine learning techniques and AI, we found out that the data is accurate,” Olyaei said. “We can identify the plastics and different types of plastics in the water.”

The sensors could be implemented into drones that would fly over the Mississippi and remove plastics from the water, Olyaei said. 

Plastics are a solid pollutant in the river, but pesticides and other chemicals also create problems within the river’s ecosystem, Jacques Finlay, a University professor who studies freshwater ecosystems, said.

Storms or other weather conditions can bring things like manure into the ecosystem, Finlay said. Manure contains phosphorus, which in addition to polluting the river, can harm aquatic life. 

Disposing of sewage also has drastic effects on the river’s water quality, Finlay said. Using the Mississippi to get rid of sewage creates dead zones in the river, parts of a body of water with minimal dissolved oxygen. 

Water without dissolved oxygen makes it difficult for aquatic plants and animals to survive, Finlay said. 

“100 years ago, the river was a dead zone,” Finlay said. “There was no dissolved oxygen because there was so much wastewater coming in from poorly treated sewage and other industrial sources.”

The river is no longer a dead zone because it became common practice for cities to have wastewater treatment facilities where sewage is cleaned before being returned to the river, Finlay said. 

Minneapolis and St. Paul clean their sewage in the Wastewater Treatment Plant in St. Paul. The facility opened in 1938 and was the first wastewater treatment facility in a metropolitan area along the Mississippi, according to the Metropolitan Council’s website.

The Gulf of Mexico, however, has a dead zone partially because of the water from the Mississippi, Finlay said. 

“A lot of the things that get carried by the river, in excess downstream, get into the Gulf of Mexico, and particularly the nutrients in the sediments have a big impact,” Finlay said. “And they fuel this big bloom of productivity, which basically is an overabundance of productivity, which consumes all the oxygen.”

Ecology, evolution and behavior professor James Cotner said the freshwater from the river mixing with the Gulf’s saltwater creates a freshwater cap over the Gulf that traps the oxygen. 

“Because fresh water floats on seawater, it stays at the surface, but because it stays at the surface, it is a good way to fertilize algae that are growing near the surface,” Cotner said. “But eventually they grow, they die and fall to the bottom.” 

Oxygen stays in the freshwater cap, leaving the bottom seawater layer without it. When the algae dies it sinks to the bottom and uses up all the oxygen, creating a dead zone, Cotner said. 

Many of the nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen contributing to the dead zone come from agriculturally productive places south of the Twin Cities, Cotner said. 

“We live in one of the most productive places on the planet in terms of agriculture,” Cotner said. “But the cost of that is often paid in the surrounding aquatic systems like the Mississippi.”

The Food and Drug Administration decided red dye No. 3 (Red 3) will no longer be allowed in American food and medicine on Jan. 15, according to the FDA’s website. 

The color additive, used in some desserts and medications, caused cancer in rats when exposed to large quantities in two studies, according to the FDA. The way Red 3 causes cancer in rats, however, does not in humans. 

According to the Center For Science in the Public Interest, candies like SweeTARTS and Fruit by the Foot use Red 3, and the ADHD medication Vyvanse contains it as well.

According to the FDA, Red 3 was banned because of the Delaney Clause, which prohibits the approval of color additives that cause cancer in either humans or animals. 

Joanne Slavin, a food science and nutrition professor at the University of Minnesota, said Red 3 was approved as a color additive in 1906 when regulations were less strict. 

California banned the dye in October 2023 which caused the FDA to reevaluate whether the dye should be included in American food. They used the previous studies on rats to guide the decision, Slavin said.

“What moved this forward is once California banned Red 3, then the FDA was kind of in a bad spot because you can have states with different laws because that makes it impossible to have food that crosses state lines,” Slavin said. “It does force their hand to ban it.”

Many companies, like Peep’s parent company Just Born, started phasing out Red 3 after California banned the additive, Slavin said. 

While there is data stating Red 3 is carcinogenic in rats, there is no evidence it causes behavioral problems in children as some people believe, Slavin said. 

“When you’re eating red frosting, you’re also eating a lot of saturated fat, and you’re also eating a lot of added sugar,” Slavin said. “So if kids are having behavioral issues when they eat too many candies or desserts or pop, is it the food coloring, or is it other things in the food, or is it their dietary pattern? There really wasn’t any new data that says this stuff is risky and making kids have any type of allergies or behavioral issues. We can’t prove that.”

Slavin said people generally do not consume Red 3 regularly because of the food it is usually used in. 

“It’s Valentine’s Day, people are going to want a red dye for frosting,” Slavin said. “But how much frosting do you eat? A lot of people don’t eat much, so exposure should be really limited.”

The FDA said companies will have until Jan. 15, 2027, to remove Red 3 from food recipes and until Jan. 18, 2028, for medicine.

While Red 3 does not pose a big concern for overall human health, Job Ubbink, a professor of food science and nutrition at the University, said it is still good practice to play it safe with color additives. 

If you want to avoid Red 3 in your food, Ubbink said to read the labels of the food you buy to find alternative products. 

“My take on it is better be safe than sorry,” Ubbink said. “It’s not a vitamin, it’s not something essential, it’s something to give it a nice color, so it’s not very essential for nutrition, it’s just nice to have.”

Bird flu cases have increased in the U.S. between species since 2022 with 67 confirmed cases in humans in January, according to the CDC.

The CDC said the current health risks for humans and animals are low, but exposures are being carefully monitored. Bird flu symptoms include eye infections and upper respiratory symptoms. 

Concerns about bird flu heightened after the U.S.’ first reported human death of the disease was reported on Jan. 6 by the CDC, University of Minnesota professor of epidemiology Shalini Kulasingam said. 

Bird flu, a disease that originated in wild birds and domesticated poultry, recently spread to cattle in March 2024, Kulasingam said. Humans have contracted the disease from working with or eating infected dairy cows and poultry.

University professor in the Department of Veterinary Medicine Declan Schroeder said the current bird flu outbreak is abnormal because of how long it has persisted. Normally, an outbreak of bird flu will last a few months, but this one has been around since 2022. 

“The key difference is it has gone into dairy cattle and has been in our dairy industry now for at least a year,” Schroeder said. “The other key thing is we are still getting positive outbreaks in the wild bird population. Usually comes and it disappears, but it just, it has persisted.”

Schroeder said the disease has yet to mutate to be able to spread from person to person, but it can spread from cattle or poultry to humans. 

“There’s a few people who work on the farms, and they’ve contracted the virus from working on the farms,” Schroeder said. “So there is no evidence for human-to-human transmission.”

Schroeder said the disease likely spread from wild birds to cattle through bird feces ending up in the cows’ food.

While there is no human-to-human transmission at the moment, there are concerns about the virus mutating as more people become infected, Schroeder said. 

“At the moment, we are concerned that if it’s circulating, and it’s been around for a long time, that there’s a chance that it might be taken then come to humans and become human transmitted,” Schroeder said. 

However, the chances of the disease mutating in humans in the near future are low, Schroeder said. 

“We as humans, unless you’re working on a dairy farm, we’re not exposed to it as much, and so the chances of it mutating in us is low,” Schroeder said.

Kulasingam said it is important to be aware of the poultry and dairy products you consume. 

“I think the bigger thing is not eating raw eggs, not drinking raw milk and then cooking your meat to a temperature that’s recommended to kill any viruses,” Kulasingam said. 

As the virus multiplies in an animal’s body, it can shed into the milk or meat of the animal.

“That’s why you would want to cook it or have it pasteurized so you could then know that you’re not being exposed,” Kulasingam said. “An analogy would be, remember with HIV, where a concern is that mothers who are breastfeeding and infected can infect their children. It’s not unlike that.” 

For those working with infected animals, wearing personal protective equipment like masks and gloves is necessary to protect yourself from the virus, Kulasingam said.

University of Minnesota President Rebecca Cunningham announced plans for a new collaboration between the University and Duluth-based Essentia Health to create a not-for-profit healthcare organization, according to a press release to University students, faculty and staff Friday. 

The press release said the organization will tackle challenges patients face, such as rising costs, limited care access and structural inequities in the healthcare industry. The partnership proposes “a solution that benefits all Minnesotans” to these problems.

“This bold new path would shift us away from business as usual and position us to join with Minnesotans in the years ahead to address our state’s challenges head-on and deliver real transformational solutions in healthcare,” Cunningham said in an email to the Minnesota Daily.

It is unclear how the University’s partnership with Essentia Health will impact its collaboration with Fairview, which announced it would not renew its partnership with the University in November 2023. The University and Fairview have been negotiating a new contract for the last year.

“Negotiations over the letter of intent that we signed in good faith with Fairview leaders in February 2024 have not progressed in ways that I can assure you would meet the needs of our public service mission,” Cunningham said in the press release.