EurekAlert! News by Subject: Policy & Ethics - Home

Policy & Ethics

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 18-Jun-2026 06:16 ET (18-Jun-2026 10:16 GMT/UTC)

UTIA agricultural policy expert wins Farm Foundation Award

University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture
Grant and Award Announcement

Andrew Muhammad, professor and Blasingame Chair of Excellence in Agricultural Policy at the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture, is the 2026 recipient of the R.J. Hildreth Public Policy Award from the Farm Foundation.

The R.J. Hildreth Award for Career Achievement in Public Policy honors career achievement in the field of public policy, through government service, as educators, or those researching agricultural policy. Farm Foundation is a 90-year-old independent organization that brings together farmers, industry leaders, policymakers, academics and other professionals to explore and solve issues shaping food and agriculture. The award was presented at the foundation’s round table meeting on June 16 in St. Louis.

MDPI rolls out AI-powered ethics checks across all submissions

MDPI AG
Business Announcement

MDPI, the open access publisher, has today announced the full deployment of its in-house AI-powered research integrity system, Ethicality. The tool is now being used to automatically screen all manuscripts submitted to the publisher—in the region of 2,000 submissions from authors worldwide per day.

Lack of access to data can skew medical conclusions

Karolinska Institutet
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Systematic reviews and meta-analyses form the basis for healthcare and health policy, but access to the data on which the results are based is often lacking. This is shown in a new policy forum article from Karolinska Institutet published in the journal PLOS Medicine.

Journal: PLOS Medicine

Sociodemographic, health care, and clinical factors associated with metabolic bariatric surgery uptake among US adults with obesity

JAMA Network
Peer-Reviewed Publication

About The Study: In this cohort study of individuals with an initial obesity diagnosis, uptake of metabolic bariatric surgery was patterned by demographic, clinical, and health care factors. This finding suggests substantial opportunity to improve access to metabolic bariatric surgery through targeted policies and interventions.

Journal: JAMA Network Open

Online grocery shopping could bring more fresh produce to SNAP families

Cornell University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A high cost of fresh fruits and vegetables and the need to restock them frequently can be barriers to healthy eating for low-income families. New Cornell University research shows that online grocery shopping, combined with incentive programs, can help.

Journal: American Journal of Health Promotion

Investigating AI clinical reasoning and digital fatigue in modern healthcare

JMIR Publications
Reports and Proceedings

JMIR Publications released two feature stories in its News and Perspectives section. Shalini Kathuria Narang’s “Can Humanlike Reasoning Be Replicated in Large Language Models for Clinical Decision-Making?” and Sara Novak’s “How Health Care Workers Can Manage Digital Fatigue” offer complementary looks into the capabilities of artificial intelligence in diagnostics, and the real-world exhaustion faced by medical professionals managing digital systems.

Journal: Journal of Medical Internet Research

Study finds landback returns of Indigenous lands happening across country, can lead public planning

University of Kansas
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Researchers at the Univesrity of Kansas have analyzed data from a website they built to document "lanback" returns, or returns of land to original Indigenous owners. Results show the returns have increased in frequency dramatically in recent years across the country. The returns have not been driven by law or policy, but by returns from private, non-profit, church, government and other owners deciding it is the right thing to do. These returns can help the field of public planning move beyond simple land acknowledgements in how they view land ownership and Indigenous communities, the authors argue.

Journal: Frontiers in Sustainable Resource Management

1
2
3
4