Grant For Cook County Soda Tax Study

The Chicago Tribune reports that a $2.5 million funding grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies will be awarded to researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago to study whether the tax improves public health over an extended period of time. The study is funded by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s charity but university researchers and officials at Bloomberg Philanthropies say the research will be "rigorous in method, free of Bloomberg’s influence and, ultimately, peer-reviewed by independent experts before being published."