Ayda Apa Pomeshikov is a Ph.D. candidate in the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Program in Near and Middle Eastern Studies. Her research interests include forced migration, refugee and diaspora studies, comparative humanitarian studies, and gender in Muslim-majority contexts. She is writing her dissertation, ‘The Prophet Was a Refugee Too: Syrian Refugee Women’s Search for Belonging in Turkey,’ for which she conducted two years of ethnographic research as a United States Institute of Peace Fellow from 2019 to 2021.

The talk is co-sponsored by the Population Health Initiative. It will take place in Parrington Hall, Room 360, from 12:30-1:30pm PT on Friday, May 23rd. To join by Zoom, register here.

Rawan Arar (Law, Societies, and Justice) will host a student lunch and discussion at 1:30pm following the talk on the topic of Job Market, Career Trajectories, and Professional Development. The lunch will take place in Raitt 221. RSVP to Jill Fulmore at fulmore@uw.edu.

Although wildfires have become increasingly common and devastating for communities in recent years, their long-term consequences for affected households remain unclear. In an article in Nature Communications that was recently featured by the Population Reference Bureau, CSDE External Affiliates Kathryn McConnell (University of British Columbia) and Jack DeWaard (The Population Council) and several colleagues use several sources of demographic data to examine migration patterns after wildfires. The authors’ analysis of combined data on wildfire-related structure loss and credit data shows that a small number of extreme wildfires account for most destruction and wildfire-induced migration. Read the full study here.

Idaho has one of the lowest rates of water fluoridation because of public concern about the practice. This concern has developed despite strong scientific convergence about the benefits of fluoride in public water supplies. In a recent article in the Idaho Statesman, CSDE Affiliate Donald Chi (Oral Health Sciences) describes his qualitative work on the subject and argues for the importance of flexible, open communication between dental patients and providers. Read the full article here.

Research has identified significant unmet mental health needs among youth in the US. In a study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, CSDE Affiliate Anthony Bui (Pediatrics) and colleagues examine racial and ethnic disparities in foregone preventive mental healthcare, unmet mental health needs, and difficulty accessing mental healthcare among youth with common mental health problems. A cross-sectional analysis of data from the 2022 National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH) identified significant racial and ethnic disparities in forgone preventive care and unmet mental healthcare needs; Black youth have higher rates of foregone preventive care, while Asian youth have higher unmet mental healthcare needs compared to White youth. There was also evidence of widespread difficulty obtaining mental healthcare across all racial categories. Read the full study here.

In the face of recent abrupt shifts in federal funding for education research, including large-scale terminations of National Science Foundation (NSF) research grant awards, the Spencer Foundation, The Kapor Foundation, The William T. Grant Foundation, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation have developed a rapid response bridge grant opportunity for impacted scholars. This rapid response bridge funding opportunity is for scholars and teams whose grants have recently been cancelled by NSF. While it is impossible for private philanthropy to close the gap left by federal funders, we can provide modest grants to mitigate some of the impact on scholars, projects, and project teams.

If you are a graduate student or post doc conducting environmental demography research, join the biweekly Population and Environment Working Group meeting organized by Sara Ronnkvist (sronnkvist@wisc.edu). This informal working group meets every other Friday at 10 am CST (Madison, WI time). Please fill out this google form to join the listserv and be notified of future meetings.

Join the Center for Aging, Climate, and Health (CACHE) for two upcoming Climate 101 webinars!

On May 15th, Prof. Kris Karnauskas of the University of Colorado Boulder will cover the basic energy balance of the climate system, the greenhouse effect, a few examples of the physical symptoms of global warming that we are observing with state-of-the-art technology including melting ice, ocean warming and sea level rise, and how we know these changes are being caused by anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. Learn more and register here.

On June 5th, Dr. Christian Braneon of the City University of New York (CUNY) Institute for Demographic Research (CIDR) will cover climate variability, the components of climate risk, and insights on developing projections of future climate for interdisciplinary research. Learn more and register here.

Since 2006, the Social Science Research Council’s Measure of Americaprogram has worked with local and state governments to integrate and report health, education, and income data in ways that enable communities to better understand their residents’ needs. We are excited to report that Measure of America has now launched an updated version of DATA2GO.NYC, their free online mapping and data tool. DATA2GO.NYC lets users explore over 400 indicators of well-being and access to opportunity across New York City’s nearly 200 neighborhoods.

The challenges of data access during federal administrative transitions can happen every four years. What follows are some resources that might be useful. We will continue to update this blog post with new information. If you have any links that could be helpful, please send csde@uw.edu your updated and helpful information. We know that what follows may not provide you with the exact data you need, so let us know what you need and what’s missing and we can try to find where it is located.

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.

Since the passage of the 1980 Refugee Act, the main goal of the refugee resettlement program has been to move refugees into paid employment within 3-6 months after arrival to ensure self-sufficiency. This results in refugees frequently being placed in “survival jobs” characterized by low pay, high turn-over, and part time hours. At this virtual meeting, Mehr Mumtaz (Ohio State University) and Someireh Amirfaiz (New Americans Alliance for Policy and Research) will present results from their community-based study that explores the experiences of resettled refugees in King County with finding employment. The research identifies barriers to securing employment and achieving economic success and elevates the voices of participants to offer recommendations to improve policy and practice to support refugees’ access to living-wage employment with continuous wage progression opportunities. We invite you to join us for this conversation on Thursday, May 22nd from 9:30 - 11am. Register here.

Each year, the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies seeks proposals for policy-oriented research directly relevant to policymakers in Washington State. All University of Washington faculty,  full-time lecturers, and UW graduate students sponsored by a faculty member are eligible to apply.

Up to $15,000 is available for each grant. Depending on available funding, awards may include a tuition waiver for graduate employees. Please note this waiver does not extend to students in fee-based programs. 

For over two decades, York University’s Centre for Refugee Studies has run an internationally acclaimed, non-credit professional development Summer Course that brings together practitioners, policy makers, and researchers to learn together about the most pressing forced migration and refugee issues.

All participants who complete the full course receive a York University Centre for Refugee Studies Summer Course Certificate. Learn more here.

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 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation released a request for rapid response grants focused on racial and indigenous health equity. Applicants whose health equity research projects* have lost federal funding are eligible to apply. Documentation demonstrating impact is required (e.g., a termination letter). The grants are available through the RWJF Evidence for Action (E4A) initiative. Learn more and apply here, or attend a weekly E4A office hour here.

CSDE collaborates with the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) in a doctoral training program called the International Max Planck Research School for Population, Health and Data Science (IMPRS-PHDS). This program is based in Rostock, Germany, but includes 12 doctoral programs in the U.S. and Europe. CSDE has one IMPRS-PHDS fellowship application slot available to current CSDE Trainees.

Applications for the 19th Annual 2025 Graduate Climate Conference (GCC) hosted by MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on November 7-9, 2025, at Woods Hole, MA are now open! The deadline to apply is June 8th, 2025.

The GCC is a student-led, interdisciplinary conference (co-hosted by UW and MIT) that offers graduate students a unique opportunity to share their climate-focused research and connect with peers from a wide range of disciplines.

The Center for Aging, Climate, and Health (CACHE) recently announced seed funding for projects integrating social and environmental data to examine the intersections of aging, climate, and health. CACHE anticipates making 2-3 awards of $20,000 and several smaller awards at $7,500. The deadline to apply is June 20, 2025. Learn more and apply here.

The Northwest Climate Adaptation Science Center is now accepting applications for its 2026 Faculty Fellowship Program, which supports research related to climate adaptation in Northwest natural and cultural resource management as well as training in the principles and practices of co-producing decision-relevant science. This is a “last-mile” program that funds activities aimed at enhancing the usability of existing research for natural resource managers.

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The Bradley Foundation is a private grantmaking foundation that honors the principles and example of its namesakes, Lynde and Harry Bradley, by pursuing a mission to restore, strengthen, and protect the principles and institutions of American exceptionalism. The foundation has a rolling proposal process around grants for its Constitutional Order and Informed Citizens initiatives. Projects should have budgets between $25,000 and $200,000.

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!)