Our History

The State We’re In is a podcast that explores themes related to health, health equity and community. Episodes examine what it means to have fair and just opportunities to be healthy in our communities and share stories related to root causes of preventable death and disease: commercial tobacco use, lack of physical activity and unhealthy eating.

The Center sponsors The Bike+Walk Minnesota Conference, geared toward everyone interested in supporting and promoting biking and walking in Minnesota, bringing together people from fields of parks and recreation, public health, tourism, transportation planning, politics, and advocacy.

Nice Ride began expansion into new neighborhoods and adding 1,500 dockless bikes to the fleet. Nice Ride is the first bike share system in North America to widely introduce the hub parking concept for dockless bikes, allowing Nice Ride to quickly expand into additional neighborhoods and bring bike share to more communities in Minneapolis.

Potential copy: As part of the organization’s ongoing commitment to addressing health inequities in our state, Blue Cross released a 2018 report showing that addressing health inequities in Minnesota would save 766 lives each year – along with $2.26 billion.

The Center for Prevention expanded our partnership with ThreeSixty Journalism to support their annual TV Broadcast and News Reporter camps. ThreeSixty Journalism, a nonprofit program at the University of St. Thomas, uses the principles of strong writing and reporting to empower diverse youth to tell the stories of their lives and communities. Both camps focused on telling the stories of local organizations working to address health inequities and implement community-led solutions.

Minneapolis, St. Paul and Duluth successfully implemented laws to restrict the sale of menthol tobacco products to adult-only retail establishments, once again putting Minnesota on the map as a leader in community-led advocacy and policy change to redress decades of targeting of low-income communities, communities of color and American Indians by the tobacco industry.