Speaker: Jessica Hardin, Department of Anthropology, Pacific University

Fellow Host: Brianna Mills

The Samoan islands face unpredicted rates of cardiometabolic disorders, including diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and hypertension. The Pacific Islands more generally have become the focus of sophisticated and historically significant research about what scholars have called the nutrition or epidemiological transition. Research on these disorders in the islands, tend to focus on three main factors that influence health behaviors: wealth increases in the region. . .

This workshop will begin by presenting an overview of the basic concepts of Spatial Analysis and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Armed with an understanding of what GIS is, students will complete a hands-on tutorial introducing ESRI’s ArcGIS software. Topics covered during the first week’s lab will include working with GIS data, simple data queries, and map creation (symbolization, labeling, layout and export). Building on the basic concepts covered during the first week, week 2 will focus entirely on hands-on training in GIS for demographic research.

CSDE is offering a two-hour workshop on using the basic graphics package in R (https://www.r-project.org/).  It assumes prior experience with R. Come out and sharpen your statistical skills!

The Graduate Training Program of the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology (CSDE) is accepting applications from students looking to train in demography and qualify for the Graduate Certificate in Demographic Methods. The certificate program is the academic pathway to advanced interdisciplinary training in population science, in addition to discipline-based courses of study.

Adrian Raftery, CSDE Affiliate and Blumstein-Jordan Professor of Statistics and Sociology at UW, recently received the St. Patrick’s Day Medal from Science Foundation Ireland for his abundant contributions to statistics. Raftery, born in Dublin, has devoted his extensive academic career to developing new statistical methodology, paying particular attention to the social and biological sciences. According to a statement from the foundation, recipients like Raftery. . .

CSDE is organizing informal meetings to discuss topics related to demographic data, computational and statistical methods; to workshop research in progress of graduate students and faculty; and to share tools via demos or tutorials.

The first meeting for the Spring quarter will be this Thursday (March 30th) at 12:00 PM in Raitt 114.

Afra Mashadi wll lead the discussion about a proposal for the "data for climate action challenge (D4CA)." 

CSDE is co-sponsoring an event at the Population Association of America’s 2017 meeting. The panel, Opportunities for Population Health Science in a Changing Context, aims to examine how a shifting political landscape could impact population health research initiatives and plans. It has been organized by the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science (IAPHS) and the NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research.

You can learn more about. . .