Please join CSDE on Friday (10/2) at 12:30pm (Location: Between Raitt Hall and Savery Hall) to celebrate the start of the 2026-2027 Academic Year! Catch up with your colleagues, meet new affiliates, staff members, fellows, and trainees, and find out what is new and upcoming at CSDE. You’ll have a chance to pick up your own Autumn Quarter 2026 Seminar Series Poster and enjoy food and refreshments. 

CSDE Graduate Trainee Mark Nepf (Evans School of Public Policy and Governance), Jessica Godwin, and co-authors recently published a research article in Case Studies in the Environment examining park access across King County using a walking-based approach. Cluster analysis revealed distinct spatial patterns, with high-access clusters concentrated in Seattle's urban core and low-access clusters primarily in eastern and southern King County, pointing to regions where targeted infrastructure investment could have the greatest impact. The study underscores the value of measuring access using walking distances that account for local road networks, rather than straight-line distance alone. The methodology, implemented with open-source R packages and publicly available data, offers a reproducible framework for practitioners and educators alike; an accompanying supplemental code vignette provides a step-by-step walkthrough that planners can adapt to assess access to parks or other local amenities, while students can use it to develop their own spatial analyses. The full article can be accessed here. Congrats Mark, Jessica, and team!

CSDE External Affiliate Michele Cadigan (Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics, Arizona State University) recently published a research article in Social Problems titled, "(De)stigmatizing Markets and Racialized Morality: The Case of Seattle's Emerging Recreational Cannabis Market." While prior research on stigmatized markets often treats conceptions of morality as race-neutral, Dr. Cadigan's study examines how moral narratives are frequently racialized in ways that justify the subjugation of minoritized racial groups. Drawing on 60 semi-structured interviews with retail store owners, managers, and staff across 26 licensed cannabis retail locations, along with 107 hours of ethnographic observation in three of these stores, Cadigan investigates how market actors in Seattle's legal cannabis retail industry grapple with the racialized stigma tied to cannabis criminalization, and what consequences this has for racial inequality in the new market. Congrats Michele!

CSDE External Affiliate Laura Lindberg (School of Public Health, Rutgers University) and co-authors recently published a review article in Contraception titled, "Inclusion of Minor Adolescents in Abortion Research, 2019-2023: A Systematic Scoping Review." The authors conducted a systematic scoping review across seven major databases to assess how minor adolescents have been included in U.S. abortion research published between 2019 and 2023. Of the 344 eligible studies identified, minors were enrolled in just 27.3%, while 43.6% did not enroll minors—83.3% of those due to explicit exclusion criteria—and the remaining 29.1% provided insufficient information to determine enrollment. Across all studies combined, minors made up only 1.1% of the more than 36 million total participants examined. The authors conclude that while a considerable body of research exists on abortion access and experiences among minors, their inclusion remains underreported, and offer recommendations for more transparent and standardized reporting to strengthen the evidence base and support development of evidence-based policies and clinical guidance for minors. Congrats Laura!

CSDE External Affiliate Dan Goldhaber (Social Work) was recently quoted in The 74 article, "Global Test Scores Hit New Lows — Just as AI Takes Hold in Schools." The piece covers the 2025 results of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which showed America's 15-year-olds falling by 14 points in reading since 2022, while math scores dropped two points over the same period and now sit 15 points lower than in 2018, part of a broader decline seen across most participating countries. The results also included some of the first international data on AI's penetration into classrooms, with over half of students across participating countries reporting they used chatbots like ChatGPT at least several times a month for research, drafting papers, or summarizing texts. Dr. Goldhaber, a longtime observer of tests like PISA, expressed concern that K–12 students would increasingly depend on AI for routine academic work, potentially depriving themselves of meaningful learning opportunities. To read the full article, visit this link.

On September 18th, CSDE External Affiliate David Swanson (UC Irvine) presented his paper “A New Probabilistic Method for Forecasting Mortality: A Case Study of Estonia" (co-wrote with Jeff Tayman) at the EAPS Workshop on Health, Morbidity, and Mortality in Hannover, Germany. On August 19th, he presented an earlier version of this paper at the annual seminar of the Estonian Demographic Association in Värska, Estonia. The paper introduces a new probabilistic mortality forecasting approach that is directly linked to the fundamental demographic equation. Because it forecasts  "years lived," this new approach directly yields life expectancy and a corresponding future life table. In an ex post facto evaluation using Estonian data from the Human Mortality Database, the new approach was found to provide accurate forecasts of "years lived by age" for both point and interval measures over 15 years. In a broader context, the accuracy of Estonia's point nLx forecasts is compared with that of Algeria, Australia, Japan, and the United States. Probabilistic nLx forecasts for Estonia from 2029 to 2039 are also provided in the paper.

Each quarter, CSDE offers workshops on data sources, statistical and biomarker methodology, introductions to statistical programming languages, and more, all given by CSDE staff and faculty affiliates. These workshops can include hands-on training in novel methods and programming, lectures on innovative data sources, and discussions of important issues in research and data collection. Over the coming academic year, CSDE will offer a diverse and exciting set of workshops in a remote format. Students, faculty, staff, and our CSDE community members from outside the University of Washington are all welcome to register for our workshops. Zoom links will be provided upon registration.

You can find our workshop website and register for our Autumn 2026 workshops in the links below. We will be filling in our schedule for Winter & Spring workshops soon, so stay tuned!

CSDE has now launched a website for your reports and policy recommendations stemming from your population research.  We welcome your reports and they will involve minimal editorial feedback from us.  We will ask you for an abstract, an image that illustrates the findings of your report, and we will provide you with a template for publishing your report via Canva.  For more information, contact our publications editor (John Downes via his email csde@uw.edu).

CSDE PIs please be sure to keep your required trainings up-to-date and visit the PI resource page to find what you need!  If you’ve never taken it, be sure to take the required Grants Management Training. In addition, be sure to create your SciENcv account and generate your biosketch and current and pending support.  Once you do so, it is easy to make updates and that will make your life easier when applying for grants and being included on others’ grant applications.

Effective August 12, NIH updated the functionality of the Just-in-Time (JIT) Module in eRA Commons, with impacts to the UW process for JIT submissions.

With this recent change, the Administrative Official (AO) role no longer has access to the JIT Module. The Principal Investigator (PI) and the Signing Official (SO) are now the only roles authorized to access JIT submissions. Neither the PI nor the SO can grant access to other persons, either by individual account or by role; the PI also cannot delegate authority to someone with an ASST role.

Moving forward, PIs need to upload all required JIT materials directly into eRA Commons before notifying OSP to proceed with review and submission.

The September 2026 issue of Studies in Family Planning, a journal of the Population Council, is now available. Highlights include a commentary on addressing women's concerns about contraception and future fertility, and a new client-experience measure for injectable contraceptive care developed and tested with 400 women in Lilongwe, Malawi.

The Natural Hazards Center, with funding from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, has launched the Health and Extreme Weather Research Award Program to address gaps in knowledge about the health risks and consequences of wildfires, hurricanes, droughts, floods, extreme heat, and other extreme weather events. 

The NCHS has proposed a redesign of the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). Starting in 2027, several key topics would rotate off the survey, while some new content would rotate on. Then, beginning in 2028–2029, NCHS plans a broader redesign to shift from primarily in-person interviews to an approach using web, mail, and in-person follow-up, with a shorter, less structured questionnaire.

Seminar—Exposure to Local Violent Crime and Abortion, Miscarriage, and Stillbirth in Mexico

Tuesday, September 29, 2026 at 8am ET/1pm BST/2pm CEST (Check in your time zone here)

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The CSSS Seminar Series will begin with a course overview on the first day of the quarter, Wednesday, September 30. This is a look ahead to CSSS courses offered during the 2026-27 academic year. This seminar will be in-person only.

Afterwards, there will be a CSSS reception from 1:30pm – 2:30pm in SAV 408 for everyone to kick off the academic year. Small appetizers and refreshments will be serve.

Early Childhood Grants

Organization: Caplan Foundation for Early Childhood

Award amount: Undisclosed award amount, but past amounts have averaged around $50,000.

Sponsor deadline: 09/30/2026

This October, Association of Croatian American Professionals (ACAP) is having its 10th annual conference taking place in Seattle. As a part of it, on October 1st, ACAP is organizing a pre-conference health-focused symposium Optimizing Your Performance, which features a number of experts on brain health, performance under pressure, and life balance. This event is open to the public and free of charge, and more information is available here: https://conference.croampro.com/pre-conference-symposium/.

Search engines increasingly display AI-generated answers above organic links, potentially displacing traffic to upstream publishers. We estimate the impact of Google’s AI Overviews (AIO) on Wikipedia’s search traffic using AIO’s staggered geographic rollout and Wikipedia’s multilingual structure. Our difference-in-differences design compares monthly external-search referrals to English Wikipedia articles with referrals to the same articles in German and French, and finds that default AIO availability reduced English search traffic by 5.45% and 4.82% , respectively. 

Georgetown McCourt School’s Massive Data Institute and Mathematica will host a webinar on October 7 (2:30–3:30 PM ET) examining recent changes to federal data collection and their implications for research. As federal agencies terminate or modify data collections, cut staff, revise data policies, and reduce external scientific oversight, the session will explore what these shifts mean for evidence-based policymaking and preview what may come next. 

RSF: Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences

Call for Papers

ISSUE ON “Wealth and Family Economics: How Much Wealth Is Needed to Achieve Social and Economic Benchmarks? Insights from New Measures and Concepts”

The Dan David Prize is the largest history prize in the world with an annual purse of $3 million. The committee awards up to nine prizes of $300,000 each year to outstanding early and midcareer scholars and practitioners in the historical disciplines. The Dan David Prize is the flagship project of the Dan David Foundation, an independent charitable organization based in Liechtenstein, which supports research, higher education and breakthrough achievements in the humanities and sciences.

Latent variable models such as item response theory (IRT) models and structural equation modeling (SEM) are widely used in social science. Traditional latent variable models heavily rely on multivariate Gaussian assumptions to model dependence among multiple latent variables. However, the Gaussian dependence structures are limited to linear, symmetric, and tail-independent relationships. In this talk, two studies will be presented that address these limitations by incorporating asymmetric copulas to model tail dependence between latent variables in IRT and SEM.

Danah Boyd is coming to Seattle to share insights from her new book “Data Are Made, Not Found: A Story of Politics, Power, and the Civil Servants Who Saved the US Census.”  She’ll be joined at Town Hall by Ron Jarmin, the former Acting Director of the US Census Bureau. Come join them for a fun conversation about democracy’s data.

The Sheldon Danziger Pipeline Grants Competition for early-career researchers supports early-career scholars who are underrepresented in the social sciences and/or who are employed at under-resourced institutions. The competition seeks to support a cohort of scholars who are diverse in their geographic origins, life experiences, and community backgrounds. Only researchers who have not previously received a trustee or presidential research grant or fellowship from RSF will be eligible to apply.

Cognitive diagnostic models (CDMs) are widely used in educational and psychological assessment to provide fine-grained information about individuals’ mastery of specific skills or attributes. Partial-mastery cognitive diagnostic models (PM-CDMs) extend traditional CDMs by allowing latent attribute mastery to vary continuously rather than being restricted to binary mastery indicators. 

Historical archives preserve some of the written record, yet social scientists are interested in more than just facts. We are also interested in taken for granted cultural assumptions, such as how much prestige was accorded to certain occupations in different historical periods. In this talk the presenter asks whether large language models, trained on vast historical text, can recover these lost “collective mentalities,” and whether we can trust that recovery as faithful. 

Core Research Grants provide up to $200,000 for PhD holders to conduct research projects aligned with RSF’s research priorities and special initiatives. Funds can be used for salary support and research expenses in accordance with RSF budget guidelines. Grants over $75,000 include 15 percent in indirect costs. RSF is accepting Letters of Inquiry for the following programs: Social, Political and Economic Inequality (SPEI);  Future of Work (FOW); Implications of the 2023 Supreme Court Decision to Ban Race-Conscious Admissions at Colleges and Universities for Educational Attainment and Economic Mobility (SCD23).

Seminar—Quantification as an Epistemic Practice: Activist Documentation of Anti-Trans Violence in Brazil 

Thursday, October 29, 2026 at 10 ET/2pm GMT/3pm CET (Check in your time zone here)

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The Center on Aging, Health, & Environment has a new call out for seed grant proposals. Additional information here!

Proposal Deadline: October 30, 2026

People who have contact with the criminal justice system experience disproportionate social and health disadvantage both prior to and following their justice involvement, compared to the broader community. Achieving equity in areas such as health, housing, and education among people with justice system involvement should be a global priority. Simultaneously, the need to reduce offending and recidivism is central to improving public safety, strengthening justice system legitimacy, and reducing future victimisation.

In partnership with the Center for Aging and Policy Studies and Center for Policy Research at Syracuse University, The Milbank Quarterly will publish a special issue to advance knowledge on the connections between policies and population health in a changing U.S. context. The special issue seeks empirical, methodological, and theoretical contributions on the topic. 

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.

Health Policy Fellows

Organization: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Award amount: Up to $195,000

Sponsor deadline: 11/03/2026

The countdown to the sixth UN World Data Forum has begun! Registration is now open for the biggest global gathering of data and statistics leaders, policymakers, innovators, researchers and development partners, taking place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, from 9–12 November 2026.

Panel—A Conversation with Queerdem* Europe

Tuesday, November 10, 2026 at 9am ET/2pm GMT/3pm CET (Check in your time zone here)

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The University of Colorado Population Center, part of the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado Boulder, is pleased to announce the 2026 Reproductive Demography Workshop, November 11-13, 2026 in Boulder, Colorado and online. The workshop will provide training on reproductive demography (including conception, pregnancy, miscarriage, abortion, and birth).

The Scholars-in-Residence Program offers both long-term and short-term fellowships designed to support and encourage top-quality research and writing on the history, politics, literature, and culture of the peoples of Africa and the African diaspora, as well as to promote and facilitate interdisciplinary exchange among scholars and writers in residence at the Schomburg Center. Awards can range from $3,000-$35,000. 

The Russell Sage Foundation’s Margaret Olivia Sage (MOS) Grants support research by multi- or inter-disciplinary teams on social, economic, and political challenges with generational consequences for social and living conditions in the United States. Such challenges are typically national in scope, involve both systemic and individual factors, and the questions they raise are as urgent for policymakers and communities as they are for researchers. 

The NIH’s Development of Collaborative Research Facilities or Research-Resource Facilities program (PAR-26-106) supports the construction or modernization of shared-use research facilities that benefit broad research communities, through two tracks: the Biomedical Research Facilities (BRF) program, funding $2–8 million for facilities advancing basic, translational, clinical, or behavioral science research, and the HIV/AIDS Research Facilities (HRF) program, funding $2–4 million for facilities aligned with NIH Office of AIDS Research priorities. 

CACHE will be at the GSA 2026 Annual Scientific Meeting, November 4 – 7 in National Harbor, MD, and is organizing a symposium “Pushing the Boundaries on Aging-Climate Topics and Methodologies”. To learn more about the GSA and to connect with leaders in aging and gerontology, find out more here. This year’s theme: “Reinforcing Resilience in Aging Science, Research and Education.”

Seminar—TBD with Dr. Byron Villacis

Tuesday, December 8, 2026 at 11:30am EST/4:30pm GMT/5:30pm CET (Check in your time zone here)

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(read more)

Demographic Research invites contributions to the Special Collection on Kinship Demography: Structures, Dynamics, and Inequalities in the journal Demographic Research, organized by Ashton Verdery, Bussarawan Puk Teerawichitchainan, Diego Alburez-Gutierrez, and Elena Maria Pojman. Submissions to this collection are possible from June 15, 2026 until December 15, 2026. Please find more information on the collection’s description and goals as well as on submission procedures here.

Seminar—TBD with Dr. Christopher A. Julian

Thursday, January 7, 2027 at 10am EST/3pm GMT/4pm CET (Check in your time zone here)

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(read more)

Call for Papers for the Special Collection “Measuring Population Health in the Era of Climate Change” in Population Health Metrics: The collection focuses on how climate change is reshaping population health and on methodological and empirical advances to measure these impacts. Submissions due February 26, 2027.

Seminar—Examining transnational families: Cross-perspectives from administrative data and statistical surveys

Thursday, March 18, 2027 at 9am EST/1pm GMT/2pm CET (Check in your time zone here)

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BMC Geriatrics is currently welcoming submissions of original research to a “War and aging” Collection. CSDE Affiliate Amy Hagopian is one of three Guest Editors for the Collection, with Rolf Kleber and Alice Aiken. If you’re interested in submitting a manuscript for the BMC Geriatrics Collection, submissions will be welcomed anytime until 30 April 2027.

The Collection welcomes original research addressing climate adaptation challenges across Africa, with particular interest in studies that provide credible scientific evidence, innovative analytical approaches, and practical solutions to support climate-resilient development. The Collection is particularly interested in interdisciplinary research involving climate science, earth observation, artificial intelligence and machine learning, socio-economic analysis, governance, indigenous knowledge, early warning systems, climate risk assessment, adaptation planning, nature-based solutions, and community-led approaches. 

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