The Miracle of Two Minneapolises in Prenatal Care

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While looking around for some data for another project, I ran into Minneapolis Health Department’s Reports. There’s a lot of great data there, but not all of it is necessarily in amazing condition for people to build off of. One data set, entitled Minneapolis Birth Data, caught my attention. Locked away in mostly tabular PDFs are a lot of interesting numbers that tell you how Minneapolis’ neighborhoods fare by way of birth statistics: with a demographic overview of mothers’ race, age, education, marital status; what trimester they began prenatal care (if at all); how adequate that care was; what their baby’s birth weight was; and whether the birth was premature.After extracting some of the data, I made a map of the report from 2009-2011. In map form, the data is both shocking, and sadly not surprising when you know about the racial and socio-economic demographics of Minneapolis’ neighborhoods. A familiar pattern emerges, where the whitest and richest neighborhoods have a better overall access to prenatal care (West Calhoun, for instance, had 43 kids between the survey period of 2009-2011, and100% are listed as receiving adequate care. Continue Reading

Visa reform may help international students

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When Jim Wu graduated with a master’s degree in biochemistry from the University of Minnesota nearly two decades ago as an international student, his new employer helped him obtain a work visa that allowed him to stay in the United States.But because the competition for visas is so high, some of Wu’s international student peers weren’t as fortunate and had to return home. “Even back then, there was competition. And the legal process is, I would say, hugely depending on the employer’s help,” said Wu, who now works for Target in Minneapolis. Some U.S. senators, including Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., hope to ease that competition with a bill that would increase the current cap on H-1B work visas and exclude those with a master’s or higher degree in a STEM field from the current annual green card cap. The Immigration Innovation Act, or the “I-Squared bill,” would raise the annual cap on H-1B visas to between 115,000 and 195,000 — depending on market demand. The current limit is 65,000 per year. The change will make it less risky for employers to invest in international graduate students and integrate more skilled workers into the economy who have been trained in U.S. universities, said Graduate and Professional Student Assembly President Alfonso Sintjago. GAPSA passed a resolution in January in support of the legislation, and Sintjago said he met with a representative from Klobuchar’s office last week to discuss the bill. “A large number of [international graduate students] would like to stay and contribute to the U.S. economy,”  Sintjago said. The bill has also gained the support of the American Council on Education, which wrote in a letter to the measure’s sponsors saying it would help offset a more than 200,000 advanced-degree STEM worker shortfall that the U.S. is projected to face by 2018. Continue Reading

Why I love community meetings about parking

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When you get involved in urban planning, it can be a real learning experience. One of the things you learn is that there are a lot of passionate people who care deeply about their neighborhoods, and want to share their thoughts with their neighbors in constructive ways. When strangers come together through positive dialogue, most of the time we bring out the best in each other. Neighbors uniting for the common good has become almost commonplace. For me, that’s what makes living in a city worth while. Continue Reading