Please join us on March 14th for CSDE’s Lightning Talk and Poster Session from 12:30 – 1:30 PST! The poster session and talks will take place in Raitt Hall 221 at the University of Washington. This event will feature presentations from David Coomes (Doctoral Student, Epidemiology), Elizabeth Nova (Doctoral Student, Sociology), Aryaa Rajouria (Doctoral Student, Sociology), and Aidan Andronicos (Graduate Student, Sociology).

We will provide light snacks and refreshments. Please find more information on the event here!

A new global analysis led by CSDE Affiliate Emmanuela Gakidou (Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation) in The Lancet warns that by 2050, about 60 percent of adults and a third of children and teens worldwide will be overweight or obese. In a recent article citing this study, Gakidou describes the crisis as a "monumental societal failure" and urges policymakers to use country-specific data to implement targeted prevention and intervention strategies. The study also suggests that while trends are alarming, immediate action could still curb the worst outcomes for future generations. Read the article here.

Scholars have long debated the role of transportation infrastructure in shaping sustainable societies by influencing environmental impacts. In a recent paper, CSDE Affiliate Dafeng Xu (Evans School) examines how road upgrades affect household waste management, a relatively understudied environmental issue, particularly in the Global South. Using census and health survey data from Benin, Xu applies difference-in-differences regression models to compare waste disposal practices in areas with and without road improvements from a major road project launched in 2011.

CSDE Affiliate Win Brown was recently quoted in a New York Times article covering the U.S. government’s decision to halt funding for the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) Program. Brown emphasized the severe impact of this funding cut, warning that it will hinder evidence-based policy decisions and international health progress. Dr. Brown’s perspective highlights the DHS Program’s role in guiding interventions and ensuring accountability in global health efforts. Read the full article here.

We are looking for a full-time Administrator to support our population science research infrastructure center funded by the NICHD.

With the Director, the Administrator is a primary point person for the development, coordination and implementation of center-wide efforts (including infrastructure and training grants, as well as reporting for internal and external purposes). The Administrator is the chief financial officer and business manager responsible for financial planning, management and overseeing daily center operations, acting independently and responsibly, given general direction from the Director and within the University’s policies and procedures. These responsibilities include departmental administration, business planning, financial management, personnel, research project support and other functions as necessary. Learn more and apply here.

The research community is facing a period of rapid change and uncertainty in the federal funding landscape. The university is closely monitoring changes and their potential impacts to the UW research enterprise. Information on the Office of Research’s Guidance on Federal Administration Research Policy page is updated frequently. If you are a researcher and interested in receiving updates, please subscribe to PI Federal communications (you’ll need UWNETID). The Provost’s office is also maintaining a site for all Federal Policy Updates.

CSDE is a member of the Association of Population Centers, and through them can offer you or your colleagues the opportunity to have new or forthcoming research that you want to share with policymakers, journalists, educators, or other non-academic audiences. The Population Reference Bureau (PRB), in collaboration with APC, is working to improve the dissemination of population and reproductive health findings. If you have peer-reviewed research on population dynamics, population health, or reproductive health that you would like to share with a broader audience in an easily digestible format, APC and PRB may be able to help. To learn how, visit their website and take a look at recent research policy briefs.

CSDE is a member of the Association of Population Centers and through them can offer you and your colleagues access to their preprint publishing platform. Research Scientists, Postdoctoral affiliates and faculty are invited to submit to the APCA Working Paper Series which gathers and disseminates original population science research papers. These working papers are authored or coauthored by scholars who are faculty or postdoctoral affiliates of the Association of Population Centers (APC) population centers.

We are excited to announce that Future of Families and Child Well-being Study (FFCWS) data are now available at the NWFSRDC. FFCWS is the longest-running and only contemporary U.S. birth cohort study of young adults based on a national sample. FFCWS follows children from birth through young adulthood, enabling researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to understand the impacts of family structure, education, employment, income, health, housing, and resource sharing on human development.

In recent weeks, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) shared several resources related to urban wildfires. A NASEM Climate Conversation on urban fires addresses climatic and societal factors contributing to an increased risk of urban fires, effects on public health and human systems, as well as ways individuals and communities can prepare for and move forward in the aftermath of these disasters. Several valuable resources were also shared and can be found below.

IPUMS recently announced updates to multiple data sources including IPUMS International, IPUMS USA, International Historical Geographic Information System (IHGIS) boundary files and new supplement data for the Current Population Survey (CPS). Learn more about these and other updates – and where to catch IPUMS staff at upcoming conference – by clicking this link.

The Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science (IAPHS) recently announced their call for abstract submissions for the 2025 Annual Meeting. The meeting theme will be “Community Engagement in Population Health Science” in recognition that solutions to health inequities and our greatest population health challenges aren’t found in the lab or a dataset, but rather within communities themselves. Learn more and submit your proposed abstract here.

The Russell Sage Foundation (RSF) will accept letters of inquiry under the core programs for Behavioral Science and Decision Making in Context and Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration. The foundation will also accept LOIs for the special initiatives Immigration and Immigrant Integration and Promoting Educational Attainment and Economic Mobility among Racially, Ethnically, and Economically Diverse Groups after the 2023 Supreme Court Decision to Ban Race-Conscious Admissions at Colleges and Universities.

The RWJF Health Policy Research Scholars is a leadership development program for full-time doctoral students from historically marginalized backgrounds who can connect how their background, identity, or lived experiences have positioned them to contribute to the goals of the program, including bringing unique and diverse perspectives to their research. In 2025, HPRS is selecting up to 40 doctoral students who are beginning their second year in fall 2025 in a full-time doctoral program and do not expect to graduate before spring/summer 2028.

Today, the personal data we give in exchange for convenient tools like Gmail and Instagram provides the raw material for predictions about everything from our purchasing power to our character. Fueled by digital technologies, the infrastructure of the internet, and the rapid expansion of computer processing power, scores and metrics pervade our lives -- streamlining and automating processes of communication, risk prediction, resource allocation, transaction, labor control and decision-making. In this talk, Marion Fourcade (Professor of Sociology, UC Berkeley) will discuss her work with Kieran Healy that argues that the disaggregation of social activities into data streams transforms the process of capital accumulation and facilitates a deeper integration of financial logics into everyday life. It also sustains the rise of insidious forms of social competition, moral judgment, and inequality. See below for details on how to attend.

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Energy and Environment program has a call for Letters of Inquiry related to Interdisciplinary Social Science Research on Energy System Interactions in the United States. This call seeks research projects led by early- and mid-career scholars that analyze the systemic interactions and connections associated with the transition to a low-carbon economy in the United States. The call encourages the submission of research project ideas that examine the links and implications between different components of the energy system and how they relate to other aspects of the economy.

Dr. Berney is a CSDE Affiliate and an Associate Professor in the Department of Urban Design and Planning, Director of Urban@UW. Dr. Davison is the Program Director of Community Engagement at the Strategic Initiatives Office. Both Dr. Berney and Davison are Co-Directors of the Urban@UW Research to Action Collaboratory.

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The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) announced the seventh competition of the Leading Edge Fellowship program, which demonstrates the potential of humanistic knowledge and methods to solve problems, build organizational capacity, and advance justice and equity in society. Leading Edge Fellowships place recent humanities PhDs with nonprofit organizations promoting social justice in their communities. Fellows take on substantive roles that draw on the skills and capacities honed in the course of earning the humanities PhD, including advanced communication, research, project management, and creative problem solving.

The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) invites applications for the Summer School for Systems Modeling will take place from 7-18 July 2025 in Laxenburg, Austria.

In this summer school, IIASA provides systematic guidance on the development and use of mathematical and computer models, addressing uncertainties in data and processes, exploring solution spaces, and distilling viable options for taking policy action. Our goal is to equip you with a solid understanding of modeling practices and limitations of models.

The Office of Research will welcome Dr. Evelynn Hammonds for “The Long Road to Equity in Research.” The lecture will take place on Monday, March 17th  at 9:30am in the Walker-Ames Room of Kane Hall. Dr. Hammonds is Harvard University’s Barbara Gutmann Rosenkrantz Professor of History of Science, Professor of African and African American Studies & Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences in the T. Chan School of Public Health.

The March seminar from the Center for Aging, Climate, & Health (CACHE) will discuss heat measures for aging and demographic research. It will address the properties and pertinence of using mean and extreme temperature measures, as well as using combined indicators of heat (temperature, humidity, radiation, or ventilation) and their adjustments by age. To illustrate these constructs, results and data integration strategies from two demonstration projects will be presented. Learn more and register here.

Over the course of the twentieth century, fertility intentions, desires, preferences, and attitudes (fertility “goals”) became key constructs for demographic research on fertility. The increasing focus in the past two decades on reproductive autonomy and reproductive justice highlights women’s (and occasionally men’s) own desires and preferences as the foundational concern for policy and programmatic activity. An upcoming webinar sponsored by the Ohio Population Consortium seek to explore the ways fertility goals have been defined and measured.

The Human Mortality Database Project team invites contributions to the 7 th HMD Symposium. This year, the Symposium will be dedicated to investigating the main drivers and obstacles to longevity progress in the pre- and post-COVID eras. Contributions from demographers, epidemiologists, public health experts and researchers from related fields conducting analyses based on the cause-of-death series newly integrated into the Human Mortality Database (HMD) are particularly encouraged. The Symposium seeks to address major topics and challenges of substantive research as well as methodological and data issues.

The Association for Economic Research of Indigenous Peoples (AERIP), the American Society of Hispanic Economists (ASHE), and the National Economic Association (NEA) invite paper submissions for the 9th annual Freedom and Justice summer conference July 31-August 2, 2025 in Puerto Rico. The Freedom and Justice Conference is an interdisciplinary social justice conference that attracts a small group of scholars dedicated to discussing pressing economic problems and their solutions for communities of color.

On April 1st, the UW School of Public Health will host a talk from Dr. Claudia Gross Shader entitled “Addressing Places in Seattle Where Overdoses and Crime are Concentrated: An Evidence-Based Approach.” Dr. Gross Shader is the Research and Evaluation Director for the City of Seattle’s Office of the City Auditor. In her role, Dr. Gross Shader authors reports for City leaders regarding public safety, unsheltered homelessness, and substance use disorder, manages City Council-funded projects with university research partners to conduct rigorous evaluations of City ordinances and programs.

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The UW Population Health Initiative (PHI) has released their call for Tier 3 grant applications. The purpose of this tier of grant is to support faculty and PI-eligible staff to create follow-on opportunities for impactful projects that have developed preliminary data or realized proof-of-concept, and are seeking to scale their efforts and/or expand the scope of their work. The Initiative is seeking applications from interdisciplinary project teams with awards of up to $150,000 per project – or $200,000 per project for teams proposing meaningful partnerships with community-based organizations.

There has been a broad array of research efforts to measure the amount of usage of digital technology (e.g. total screen time) and the observed effects and impact on health. Despite these efforts, the full implications – both positive and negative – on human physiology, psychology, behaviour, well-being and mental health remain unclear.   To address this gap, the Huo Family Foundation invites applications for special projects on "The Effects of the Usage of Digital Technology on Brain Development, Social Behaviours and Mental Health in Children and Young People."

The Russell Sage Foundation (RSF) and Arnold Ventures recently announced a collaborative call for causal research on the criminal justice system. Criminal justice policies and practices include the work of the police, courts, jails, prisons, probation and parole, and immigration detention. Proposals must include causal research designs that can reliably isolate the treatment effects of a policy, practice, or intervention such as difference-in-differences, regression discontinuity, instrumental variables, and randomized controlled trials.

This is a postdoctoral fellowship program for grants of up to $250,000 USD to support early career researchers in the social sciences and humanities (with particular emphasis on philosophy, sociology of science, and metascience) who are interested in building a career in understanding the implications of AI for the science and research ecosystem. Grants of up to $250,000 (USD) over up to two years will be awarded to social sciences and humanities postdoctoral researchers who study the implications of AI for Science. Learn more here.

The application for the 2025-26 Gatzert Child Welfare Fellowship for Dissertation Writing is now open in MyGrad and is due on April 15, 2025 at 12 PM (noon) PST.

This fellowship is for the final stages of writing a Ph.D. dissertation that contributes to the lives of children with disabilities. The program funds one quarter of UW state tuition and fees, GAIP insurance, and a stipend at the Predoctoral TA II rate.

This five-day workshop from June 16-20 in Ann Arbor, MI will orient participants to the content and structure of the core PSID interview, its special topics modules, and its supplemental studies, including the Child Development Supplement (CDS), the Transition into Adulthood Supplement (TAS), and the 2013 Rosters and Transfers Module. In addition we will discuss topics including the genomics data collected from children and adults as well as new data files which explain family relationships and demographic characteristics over time.

Submissions are now open for research to be featured at the 2025 APPAM Fall Research Conference. This year’s conference theme is “Forging Collaborations for Transformative and Resilient Policy Solutions.” Submissions are being solicited from the following policy areas (sample included below):

• Education
• Employment and Training Programs
• Health Policy
• Innovations in Science and Technology
• Poverty and Income Policy
• Social Equity and Race

The William T. Grant Scholars Program supports career development for promising early-career researchers. The program funds five-year research and mentoring plans that significantly expand researchers’ expertise in new disciplines, methods, and content areas.

Applicants should have a track record of conducting high-quality research and an interest in pursuing a significant shift in their trajectories as researchers. We recognize that early-career researchers are rarely given incentives or support to take measured risks in their work, so this award includes a mentoring component, as well as a supportive academic community.

The Health and Medical Care Archive, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is sponsoring a workshop during the annual ICPSR Summer Program in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Be sure to apply for this workshop in advance––enrollment is capped at 25 participants. Apply by 5/26/25.

The Barcelona Four Seasons School of Demography (Bcn4Seasons School) programme consists of short courses offering the opportunity to acquire essential knowledge of sociodemographic topics and associated techniques that are applicable to social sciences in general. This innovative educational programme is led by the Centre d’Estudis Demogràfics (CED – Centre for Demographic Studies), an internationally renowned sociodemographic research centre addressing population-related issues and affiliated with leading international networks and associations. The outstanding quality of its research work has been acknowledged both nationally and internationally.

We invite early career faculty affiliates to join our new mailing list, csde_earlycareer. Among other things, this is the way to find out info about our quarterly Early Career Affiliate happy hours, and you won’t want to miss those! These will be a great way to meet up with other junior scholars in a fun and casual atmosphere over snacks and drinks. Who counts as early career, you ask? Typically we mean folks who are pre-promotion (i.e. assistant professor or equivalent), but we're not strict! Join the list here (Please note - this is for faculty only - we are strict about that. Sorry, all others!)

Check this space for new activities and events leading up to PAA 2025. We will update it regularly as the conference approaches!

The Psychosocial Workshop is a two-day gathering of social scientists, public health researchers, and related professionals working on sexual and reproductive health issues, particularly those related to abortion, contraception, fertility, and sexually transmitted diseases. The signature format of the workshop is its dynamic series of five-minute presentations, where each speaker discusses current work or new ideas, that allows for peer feedback and dialogue in a collegial environment. Always held prior to the PAA Annual Meeting, this year the workshop will take place on Wednesday and Thursday, April 9 and 10, 2025 at the Marriott Marquis in Washington DC or virtually online. Learn more and register here.

The Center for Aging, Climate and Health (CACHE) also recently announced a 1-day mini-conference with the Interdisciplinary Network on Rural Population Health and Aging (INRPHA) ahead of the PAA Annual Conference. The mini-conference will feature research presentations and discussion on data resources and gaps at the intersection of aging, climate, and health. Led by INRPHA and CACHE, this session will bring together researchers to explore pressing challenges and opportunities in the field.

Statistics indicate that as of 2024, nearly eight percent of the U.S. population identifies as LGBT, with much of this growth attributed to increases in LGBT identification among younger generations. In recent years, policies and laws have been enacted in support of LGBTQI+ communities and their well-being. For example, the 21st Century Cures Act included provisions for the NIH Director to encourage efforts to improve research related to the health of sexual and gender minority (SGM) populations, including to increase participation of SGM populations in NIH-supported clinical research and to facilitate the development of methods for conducting SGM research. SGM people were designated as a population with health disparities for NIH research in 2016 by the Director of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities in consultation with the Director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The NIH SGM health research portfolio has steadily grown and diversified since 2015.

However, members of SGM communities still face unique and significant disparities and barriers across domains such as physical, mental, and behavioral health; social and structural determinants of health; and healthcare access and quality. This includes higher SGM group-specific rates of and risks for some chronic health conditions (e.g., arthritis, asthma, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, certain forms of cancer, and HIV/AIDS), depression, anxiety, eating disorders, substance use, smoking, stigma, discrimination, bullying, using preventive health services less frequently, and negative experiences in healthcare settings.

Population Research Planning Grants (PRPGs) are designed to provide in-kind support and/or funds of up to $25k* to support a wide array of activity types throughout the development of a research project. As part of our mission to complement rather than duplicate other campus opportunities such as the Population Health Initiative seed grants, we will consider funding things activities such as the use of CSDE services beyond the standard allotments for affiliates.

CSDE Matching Support includes in-kind or monetary support to accompany a submission to other on-campus funding mechanism, such as PHI, EarthLab, or Urban@UW. All projects must have a CSDE affiliate who is UW faculty and is listed as a PI or co-PI, with any number of other collaborators. Note that we require (PRPGs) or strongly suggest (matching funds) contacting either Development Core Director (Steven Goodreau) or CSDE Director (Sara Curran) to discuss possibilities for your specific proposal before submission.

As of 5/20/2024, NSF proposals that may impact the resources or interests of a federally recognized Tribal Nation will not be awarded by NSF without prior written approval from the official(s) designated by the relevant Tribal Nation(s).

Proposers must:

• Seek guidance from the potentially impacted Tribal Nation on activities that require review and prior approval from that Tribal Nation’s authorized designee.
• Submit a written request to the relevant Tribal Nation (based on their guidance), for approval to carry out the proposed activity that requires their review and approval.
• Complete the checkbox for “Potential Impacts on Tribal Nations” on the Cover Sheet. Note, lead organizations are responsible for this on collaborative proposals & proposals with subawards considered a single unified project.
• Upload one of the following into "Other supplementary documents" of Research.gov:
  • a copy of the written request to the relevant Tribal Nation to carry out any proposed activity/activities that may require prior approval from them
  • written confirmation from the Tribal Nation(s) that review and approval is not required
  • a copy of relevant Tribal Nation approval

This notice provides the research and research training community an overview of application and peer review changes impacting grant applications submitted for due dates on or after January 25, 2025, including:

• Simplified Review Framework for Most Research Project Grant Applications
• Revisions to the NIH Fellowship Application and Review Process
• Updates to Reference Letter Guidance
• Updates to NRSA Training Grant Applications
• Updated Application Forms (FORMS-I)
• Common Forms for Biographical Sketch and Current and Pending (Other) Support