Articles Tagged: University of Iowa

A quarterly health publication.

Everyone dreads hearing from their dentist that they will need a root canal. Thankfully, advancements in the area have made the root canal procedure much less painful and much quicker.

Five bills poised to directly affect Iowa’s public universities survived the second “funnel” deadline of the 2025 Legislative session this week — including one to establish a “Center for Intellectual Freedom” at the University of Iowa and another requiring each campus to create at least one three-year bachelor’s degree program.

In seeking its own batch of records from a bankrupt Mercy Iowa City — which last week won a court order for voluminous documents in its ongoing liquidation battle — the community hospital’s former managing affiliate MercyOne is airing new details about backroom discussions, discord, and deals that precipitated Mercy Iowa City’s downfall.

Also, in the Capitol Notebook, lawmakers advance a bill allowing psilocybin prescriptions in Iowa if FDA approves the substance.

Of the more than 10,000 University of Iowa faculty and staff who completed a “personal health assessment” in 2024, just over half said they’re “thriving” — while the other nearly half said they’re “struggling.”

After two-plus years fighting a medical negligence lawsuit involving the death of a 75-year-old University of Iowa cancer patient — who was found unresponsive on the floor next to her inpatient bed three days postsurgery — the state has negotiated a settlement to pay the family $1.5 million.

As the University of Iowa works to comply with Board of Regents directives and legislative mandates to curtail diversity, equity, and inclusion work across campus, its philanthropic foundation – the UI Center for Advancement -- is grappling with how to handle the tens of thousands donated to a longstanding diversity fund.

Friday was unseasonably warm across Iowa. In Iowa City, temperatures topped out around 80 degrees. That’s nearly 30 degrees warmer than the average high temperature in late March. The bright sunshine brought people out to the the Pentacrest in downtown Iowa City.

A federal judge this week ordered MercyOne to produce a long list of records associated with its six-year management of the bankrupt Mercy Iowa City after a committee overseeing the hospital’s liquidation accused the former managing partner of withholding documents and details about what led to Mercy Iowa City’s “swift financial decline.”

On the day by which University of Iowa officials said they were told to close the campus’ renamed and reformed Division of Access, Opportunity, and Diversity — previously its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Division — the university on Thursday debuted a new website for its Office of Civil Rights Compliance.

Since Iowa State University initiated the practice in the 1800s, more than 230 honorary degrees have been conferred by the state’s public universities to individuals who demonstrated “extraordinary achievements” — and now the campuses have a uniform policy to rescind them, if necessary.

Iowa House Republicans continued their efforts to reform higher education policies in the state by passing a series of bills Tuesday aiming to — among other things — further curtail diversity, equity and inclusion programming across not only Iowa’s public universities but its private campuses as well.

As part of sweeping cuts across a broad swath of U.S. departments and agencies, $35 million in federal grants and contracts headed to the University of Iowa’s 105-year-old IIHR-Hydroscience & Engineering center have been placed on hold.

After strident pushback from Republican lawmakers who accused the University of Iowa of falling short of its mandate to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts on campus, UI officials on Thursday announced plans to close its renamed “Division of Access, Opportunity and Diversity.”