CSDE-news Bulletin

April 4, 2007

CSDE WEEKLY SEMINAR: Smokers and the Emergence of a Stigmatized Social Status - Jennifer Stuber, UW School of Social Work
CSDE ANNOUNCEMENTS: From CSDE Director, Shelly Lundberg: A Banner Year for CSDE at the PAA!
CAMPUS SEMINARS & EVENTS OF INTEREST: TODAY: Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences Seminar; TODAY: Department of Global Health Llecture: Tobacco Control Strategies - What Works? (and What Doesn't); WCPC Seminar Series on Poverty and Public Policy, 2006-07; FREE film screenings through the World Health Cinema project; Film presentation by the Visual Anthropology Working Group; Sustainable Human Development Series lecture: HIV/AIDS and Poverty; Department of Global Health Lecture: From Data to Evidence to Policy: A Case Study of Health Information in Thailand; CSDE affiliate, Mark Ellis, will join other guest speakers at UW mini-conference: Beyond Borders: Perspectives on U.S. Immigration
FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES: Provost Bridge Funding Program; NIH announces: International Collaborative Oral Health Research Planning Grant (R21)
CALLS FOR PAPERS: 5th African Population Conference; Journal of Family Relations - Call for papers on transnational families
TRAINING AND EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES: National Institute on Drug Abuse announces epidemiology research vacancies

CSDE WEEKLY SEMINAR

Smokers and the Emergence of a Stigmatized Social Status
Jennifer Stuber, UW School of Social Work

Friday, April 6, 2007
12:30-2:00 Parrington Hall Forum

CSDE ANNOUNCEMENTS

A Banner Year for CSDE at the PAA!

The Population Association of America Annual Meeting was held in the Marriott Marquis hotel on Times Square in New York City last week (March 29-31). More than 30 CSDE-affiliated researchers, including faculty and students, were on the program as presenters or discussants. As usual, the PAA provided a wonderful opportunity to share and get comments on our own work and to catch up on the work of others--and CSDE's profile at this event continues to grow.

Becky Pettit organized a dinner at the nearby Trattoria Dopo Teatro that was attended by about 40 affiliates and friends, including many former CSDE graduate fellows. It was a lively event and, by popular demand, we will be making it an annual one.

CAMPUS SEMINARS & EVENTS OF INTEREST

WCPC Seminar Series on Poverty and Public Policy, 2006-07

"Beyond Employment: On the Social Contributions of Citizens"
John Tambornino, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Western Washington University

Monday, April 9, 2007
3:00 - 4:30 PM
School of Social Work, Room 305

FREE film screenings through the World Health Cinema project

Hold Your Breath
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
6:30pm-8:00pm
Kane Hall, Room 220

Invisible Children
Monday, April 16, 2007
6:30pm-8:00pm
HUB Auditorium

Click here for more details

Film presentation by the Visual Anthropology Working Group

Carved from the Heart
Friday, April 13
12:30-1:30 pm
Allen Auditorium, Allen Library

For more details, see http://depts.washington.edu/visanth/screenings.shtml

Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences Seminar

"Time-Clocks, Employee Swipe Behavior and Implications for Wage and Hour Litigation"-- Nathan Woods,Economist, Welch Consulting

Wednesday, April 4, 2007
12:30pm
Savery 209

Abstract: In recent years so-called wage and hour issues (as distinct from traditional labor discrimination matters) have emerged as the employment litigation of choice for the plaintiffs' bar. Searching Google for "wage and hour" with the name of your (least) favorite large company will likely return several hits. Indeed, nearly every corporation in the US with a large workforce is susceptible to multiple lawsuits under both federal and state laws, of varied scopes and types under the wage and hour umbrella. This is particularly the case if a company operates in states like California - the state with the toughest wage and hour protections laws. There are many varieties of wage and hour issues but perhaps the most litigated issue has to do with meal and rest break violations.

The attraction of lawsuits of this kind stems from two primary sources. First is the tremendous amount of monetary damages in the offing for plaintiffs (and plaintiffs' attorneys) if a litigation or mediation outcome is reached in plaintiffs' favor. These damages are routinely estimated in the many tens of millions of dollars, if not substantially more. Second, the ready availability of huge amounts of heretofore unworkable data and the computing means to efficiently, and accurately, analyze this data makes this sort of litigation feasible for plaintiffs to bring.

Our effort here, while acknowledging the primary incentive of the first cause, is to delve particularly into the second - looking specifically at the data analysis possibilities presented in analysis of meal and rest break violations, and resulting penalties among hourly workers. We attempt to analyze whether counting meal and rest break violations - and generating damages on the basis of this count - in the manner proscribed by statute, passes social science muster. Specifically, we look at whether actual time clock punch behavior, in combination with different standard deviations thresholds would substantially alter the counts of violations generated and the resulting damage estimates.

Tobacco Control Strategies - What Works? (and What Doesn't)

Wednesday, April 4th
1:00-2:50 pm
Health Sciences Building, Room I-132 Near I-court Rotunda

The UW Tobacco Studies Program, as part of the spring quarter Tobacco and Public Health course (HSERV 590B) welcomes Kenneth Warner, PhD, Dean, University of Michigan School of Public Health, Avedis Donabedian Distinguished University Professor and internationally renowned tobacco control scholar and researcher. As an economist and professor of public health policy, Dr. Warner will share a typology of tobacco policy interventions as described in a recent article, "Tobacco Policy Research: Insights and Contributions to Public Health Policy" that served as the opening chapter of a new book, Tobacco Control Policy of which he was the editor. He will likely weave in some of the many interesting stories he has collected from his 30 years of work in the tobacco control field.

HIV/AIDS and Poverty

Thursday, April 5
12:00-1:30 p.m.
Parrington Hall 309 (Forum)

This presentation will focus on the relationship between poverty and HIV/AIDS in the context of the World Bank's national poverty reduction strategies for the developing world. The presenters will outline economic, socio-cultural and structural determinants as contributing factors fueling the HIV epidemic in various countries.

Presented by: Amina Baba-Manu, Population Leadership Program Packard-Gates Fellow, Nigeria Vinoy Ohdar, Population Leadership Program Packard-Gates Fellow, India; Muhammad Tariq, Population Leadership Program Packard-Gates Fellow, Pakistan Afework Kassa Woldemichael, Population Leadership Program Packard-Gates Fellow, Ethiopia Ethiopia

Sponsored by the Marc Lindenberg Center in conjunction with the International Development Certificate Program, the Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship Program, and the Population Leadership Program

From Data to Evidence to Policy: A Case Study of Health Information in Thailand

Monday, April 16, 2007
4:00-5:00p (reception from 5-5:30p)
Turner Auditorium, Room D209, Health Sciences Building

Dr Stephen Lim is a Senior Research Fellow at the School of Population Health, University of Queensland. Before moving to University of Queensland he was an economist at the Department of Health System Financing, Expenditure and Resource Allocation, World Health Organization, Geneva. He is predominantly based in Bangkok, Thailand where he leads the Setting Priorities using Information on Cost-Effectiveness (SPICE) Project, an international collaborative research project between the School of Population Health, University of Queensland and the Ministry of Public Health, Thailand. The SPICE project covers a range of health information research on the quality of mortality data, health inequality, risk factor and disease burden, economic evaluation and priority setting, and other health economic and policy analysis. He also conducts collaborative research activities in international health economics and policy research with leading institutes including the Harvard Initiative for Global Health and the World Health Organization.

Beyond Borders: Perspectives on U.S. Immigration

Thursday, April 5
5:30pm
HUB West Ballroom

A small coalition of UW student groups and individuals will present Beyond Borders: Perspectives on U.S. Immigration, a mini-conference to bring together the University of Washington campus community to talk about immigration. We want to celebrate the important contributions immigrants and refugees make to the U.S. culture and economy, explore common misperceptions about immigration, discuss the myriad obstacles immigrants face in this country, and talk about ways to bring justice and fairness to our immigration system. Beyond Borders is part of a nation-wide event organized by Hate Free Zone called "A Night of 1000 Conversations," an effort to re-ignite a national dialogue about immigration issues, mobilize our communities, and to influence Congress to seek fair legislation.

Beyond Borders will feature a short film called "Uprooted: Refugees of the Global Economy," followed by guest speakers Professor Arzoo Osanloo, Professor Mark Ellis, Cambodian refugee and activist Many Uch, and Hate Free Zone Executive Director Pramila Jayapal. The night will end with an array of focus groups led by University of Washington professors and community leaders, giving participants the opportunity to engage in conversations on asylum and refugee rights, undocumented workers, Mexican immigration, immigrants and health care, and the racialized history of U.S. immigration, among other important topics.

To register and for more information, please visit http://students.washington.edu/chrj/

FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES

Provost Bridge Funding Program

The Provost's Office will provide bridge funding to support faculty to span the gap in critical research programs. The University of Washington ranks among the top research institutions in the world and has a budget of almost $1 billion in research grants and contracts. The UW and the region depend on the discoveries that come from our research programs. Several key issues face us during the next few years: (1) NIH funding, which accounts for about half of our research funding, is flat; (2) starting and more established faculty face increased competition for limited federal and non-federal research funds; (3) investigators who have research staff may face loss of key personnel.

For more details, click here.

International Collaborative Oral Health Research Planning Grant (R21)

National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) has announced a grant program to support planning and protocol development of biomedical, clinical, epidemiological, and behavioral/social studies in international research areas as may be identified in the Institutes's Strategic Plan or developed in consultation with the international research community. The purpose of this initiative is to bring together international researchers through collaborative partnerships that conduct research according to common protocols. The planning grant is intended to provide support for the development of a refined study design, organizational plan, detailed protocol criteria, and budget, for implementation of cross-national studies whose rationale and basic design are considered scientifically meritorious, and which cannot be accomplished solely within the U.S. For purposes of this program, "cross-national" means at least three countries are involved. These three countries may or may not include the United States.

URL for more information: http://grants1.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PAR-06-219.html

CALLS FOR PAPERS

5th African Population Conference will be held in Arusha, Tanzania
December 10-14, 2007

The general theme of the meeting is* "Emerging Issues on Population and Development in Africa." The deadline for submission of abstracts is April 30, 2007. For more information, go to http://www.uaps.org

Journal of Family Relations: Interdisciplinary Journal on Applied Family Studies invites submissions for an October 2008 Special Issue on the topic of Transnational Families. Papers may be on qualitative or quantitative applied research as well as on theoretically and empirically-grounded policy and/or practice. Deadline is July 2, 2007. For ideas on topics, submission procedures and other details, click on: http://www.ncfr.org/pdf/zippy_news/FR_CFPs_3-26-07.pdf

TRAINING AND EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES

National Institute on Drug Abuse announces epidemiology research vacancies

(NIDA) has two extramural positions open in the Epidemiology Research Branch of the Division of Epidemiology, Services, and Prevention Research. One is for a psychiatric epidemiologist and one for a social epidemiologist. Job descriptions and application information are at http://www.usajobs.opm.gov/; under Where: enter NIDA; under Place: enter Bethesda, then hit Search.

Closing date April 26, 2007