We look forward to welcoming Lauren D. Olsen from Temple University on Friday, May 22 from 12:30 – 1:30 PM, in Parrington Hall 360 and on Zoom (Register Here). This seminar is co-sponsored by the Population Health Initiative and the UW Medicine Department of Bioethics and Humanities. Follow this link to sign up for a 1:1 meeting with Dr. Olsen during their visit on May 22.

Medical schools have increasingly incorporated the humanities and social sciences into their teaching, seeking to make future physicians more empathetic and more concerned with equity. In practice, however, these good intentions have not translated into critical consciousness. Humanities and social sciences education has often not only failed to deliver on its promise but even entrenched the inequalities that the medical profession set out to address.

Lauren D. Olsen examines how U.S. medical school faculty conceived, designed, and implemented their vision of education, tracing the failures of curricular reform. She argues that the way medical students encounter humanities and social sciences material in practice has served to reinforce the status quo by teaching them to individualize systemic problems. Students learn to avoid advocacy, critique, and attention to structural inequalities—while also gathering that it will be up to them to find coping strategies for problems from burnout to systemic racism. Olsen pinpoints the limitations of how clinical faculty understand the humanities and social sciences, arguing that in structuring and teaching courses, they assumed, reinforced, and glorified a white, elite model of the medical profession. Showing how deeply intertwined professional and social identities are in medical education, Curricular Injustice has significant implications for how occupations, organizations, and institutions shape understandings of inequality.

In a recent publication in JAMA Network Open, CSDE Affiliate Edwin Wong (Health Services) and co-authors examined whether the proportion of primary care delivered via telehealth was associated with differences in care quality among 744,599 veterans in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) between 2022 and 2023. Veterans with low or intermediate telehealth use had clinical and quality-of-care outcomes comparable to those receiving only in-person care across most measures, particularly cardiovascular and behavioral health measures. High telehealth users (those receiving 50% or more of their primary care remotely) had lower performance on outcomes that required or benefitted from in-person interaction, such as influenza vaccination, statin adherence, and depression screening. The findings support hybrid telehealth and in-person models while suggesting that high-proportion telehealth users may need additional resources to ensure quality care.

CSDE Affiliate Leah Marcotte (Medicine) and co-authors, in partnership with Cierra Sisters, recently published an article in Frontiers in Digital Health reporting on a randomized factorial experiment evaluating chatbot designs for breast cancer screening (BCS) outreach.  The study tested four conditions with a Black woman persona presented as either a primary care doctor or a breast cancer survivor who used either a direct versus polite communication styles. The doctor-polite condition was most preferred for trust and intention to use. Qualitative feedback indicated that the doctor persona and polite communication style were perceived as professional and friendly, respectively. While some participants appreciated representation in the use of a Black woman persona and found it relatable, others perceived it as stereotyping, patronizing, or targeting. Together this underscores the need for caution in culturally tailored chatbot design.

CSDE is thrilled to announce the Charles and Josephine Hirschman Award for student research. CSDE students may apply for up to $2,000 in funds to directly support a research project. Funds may support activities such as the cost of conducting fieldwork, data purchases, the hiring of a translator or transcriber, or participant rewards in surveys. Be creative! All funds must be spent during the 2026-27 academic year and may not be used to pay tuition or your own salary. Applications are due Friday, May 22, 2026. Apply here. A faculty advisor must approve of your application via this form.  Click read more to see details on eligibility and review criteria .

Join UW Medicine, Department of Bioethics and Humanities on May 22 from 9-10:30 AM in the Seattle Health Sciences Education Building (Room 421) on or Zoom for a conversation with Lauren D. Olsen, PhD, MA on medical education and social inequality. Olsen’s scholarship examines how medical school curricula and training structures can perpetuate inequities in care. Drawing from her new book, “Curricular Injustice: How U.S. Medical Schools Reproduce Inequalities“ (Columbia University Press, 2024), she will share insights into reforms that shape the future of physician training and healthcare outcomes. Drawing from her new book, “Curricular Injustice: How U.S. Medical Schools Reproduce Inequalities“ (Columbia University Press, 2024), she will share insights into reforms that shape the future of physician training and healthcare outcomes. Register here to join by Zoom.

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. The fellowship funding will support a one quarter research stay at the MPIDR any time between July 1,  2026 and June 30, 2027.  Information about the program, the faculty, and partner institutions can be found here. Applications are due to CSDE by Tuesday, May 26. Apply here.

Studies in Family Planning is calling for abstract submissions for a special issue on “Rethinking Contraceptive Futures,” by June 30, 2026. This call for abstracts invites contributions that broaden and challenge traditional understandings of contraceptive use, access, and meaning. Contributions may engage explicitly with family planning debates but should foreground contraceptive practices and their evolving meanings within broader social and demographic paradigms. We seek papers that illuminate contraceptive practices as culturally,

The Social Science Research Council is pleased to announce the LEGO Foundation Fellowship, a new global research fellowship developed in partnership with the LEGO Foundation. Learn more here.  Applications open June 1 and will be due July 31.  The fellowship will provide flexible support of up to $300,000 over three years for early- and mid-career researchers whose work can strengthen understanding of how children thrive across diverse contexts.  Research themes of interest include: the youngest children in crisis and conflict settings; inclusion and wellbeing for neurodivergent children; and children's thriving in an AI-enabled world.

The Northwestern Main and Advanced Causal Inference Workshop will hold its 15th annual meeting on Research Design for Causal Inference at Northwestern Law School in Chicago, IL. The  main workshop takes place Monday – Friday, August 3-7,  and the advanced workshop follows, Monday – Wednesday, August 10-12, with an optional machine learning primer on Sunday afternoon, August 9.

In person-registration is limited to 125 participants for each workshop, so hurry up and register for in person attendance!  There will also be a Zoom option, but attending in person is encouraged. Get more information and register now. 

IUSSP and its co-organizes invite papers for a workshop focused on “Aftermath of a Pandemic: Changes in Mortality and Health.” Post-pandemic periods can reveal or amplify existing health inequalities, and the effects of pandemics often extend beyond the acute phase of infection, influencing long-term patterns of mortality and overall population health. This workshop will focus on these poorly understood effects.

The workshop will be hosted by the Oslo Metropolitan University on January 28-29, 2027. Submit a 300-word abstract and include a title, author(s), affiliation(s) via this form by September 11, 2026. Abstracts should be written in English. Attendance to the workshop is limited to 25 participants. Following the workshop, the organizers plan to pursue a special issue of a scientific journal.

Studies in Family Planning is calling for submission for a special issue on “Pandemic and Epidemic Impacts on Reproduction, Sexual and Reproductive Health, and Family Dynamics: Longer-Term Consequences and Cross-Crisis Perspectives,” due September 15, 2026. The special issue aims to broaden the field by situating COVID-19 within a broader landscape of pandemics and epidemics with demonstrable implications for reproduction, family life, and SRHR. In addition to longer-term analyses of the COVID-19 pandemic,

The IUSSP Early Career Awards aim to honour outstanding contributions to the broad field of population studies by early career scholars in different world regions and boost the global visibility of their achievements. Nominate colleagues by November 1, 2026. Nominees must have received their PhD within the last seven years and be IUSSP members. For more information about the Award and the nomination procedure and to fill out the application form, please go to IUSSP Early Career Awards.

MDPI launched a new journal Populations roughly one year ago and invite submissions from CSDE Affiliates and Trainees.  Here is some information about publishing with them. Some recently published articles include:

• Nonunion and Cohabiting First Births in the U.S.: Racial and Socioeconomic Disadvantage Predict Nonunion Births for Men as Well as Women
• A Cross-Sectional Study of Obstetric Violence Against Indigenous Women in the Ecuadorian Amazon: A Decolonial Demographic Approach
• Population-Level Shifts in Caribbean Family Resilience Across the COVID-19 Pandemic
• Becoming a Net Receiver of International Migrants: An Age-Structural Model of the Shift to Persistently Positive Net Migration Rates

IPUMS released multiple data updates, including DHS data, IHGIS data, and CPS data.

IPUMS DHS has released standard variables from 112 new samples, including 34 new countries. The release includes data from the women, household members, births, and children units of analysis. Users can also now request IPUMS DHS data extracts programmatically using the IPUMS API and through our client libraries for R (ipumsr) and Python (ipumspy).

IHGIS has released tables and boundary files for population and housing censuses from Benin 2013, Niger 2012, and Sierra Leone 2015. We have also added a shapefile for Kenya 2019 locations (n = 3,838) to accompany previously released data. In addition, new linking variables in the IPUMS DHS release allow users to easily attach IHGIS data to DHS records.

IPUMS CPS has added the March 2026 monthly data. We have also updated the January 2026 monthly data to reflect a revised version of the file released by the Census Bureau that incorporates the 2026 population estimates. See the IPUMS CPS revision history for details.