At the last Friday of the Winter quarter, join us in celebrating CSDE’s graduate students and learning about their cutting-edge research and latest demographic insights! These early-career members of the population science community are eager to connect their work across disciplines and translate their findings for basic and applied research impact.

Erin Carll, Sociology
How Discourse about Tenant Eligibility in Seattle Rental Listings Has Evolved with Tenant Screening Regulations

Xinguang Fan, Sociology
Intimate Partner Violence and Contraceptive Use in Developing Countries: How does the Relationship Depend on Context?

Lee Fiorio, Geography
Measuring U.S. Interstate Mobility Using State of Birth Stocks: 1850 to 2010

Emily Pollock, Anthropology
Relationship Duration and Hazard of Dissolution Among 15-29-year-olds in the National Survey of Family Growth

Hilary Wething, Public Policy
The Effect of Seattle’s Paid Sick and Safe Time Ordinance on Workers’ Earnings Trajectories

CSDE Affiliate Jody Early, Associate Professor at the School of Nursing and Health Studies at University of Washington – Bothell, has just received a national award recognizing her excellence as a mentor. Early received the Karen Denard Goldman Mentor Award from the Society for Public Health Education (SOPHE), a nonprofit association that represents health education professionals and students. The award honors SOPHE members who have distinguished themselves as mentors through professional development and by linking research and practice.

In 2015, high rates of microcephaly were reported in Northeast Brazil following the first South American Zika virus outbreak. CSDE Affiliate Ali Mokdad, Professor of Health Metrics Sciences at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) and Chief Strategy Officer for Population Health, is part of a large collaborative effort to understand the association between the Zika outbreak and microcephaly in Brazil between 2015 and 2017. The article, published in PLoS Medicine, merges data from multiple national reporting databases in Brazil to estimate exposure to 9 known or hypothesized causes of microcephaly for every pregnancy nationwide since the beginning of the Zika outbreak, analyzing over 4 million births.

According to CSDE Affiliate Katie Baird, Professor of Economics and Division Chair for Politics, Philosophy and Public Affairs at University of Washington - Tacoma, a striking feature of the growing income gap between generations is that state and federal policy does much less than it could to address it. While spending on Social Security and Medicare keeps rising, investment in education and child care languishes. In a few years, the US will be spending more on repaying federal debt than investing in children and youth. This backdrop helps make the case for House Bill 1592 and Senate Bill 5704, establishing Child Savings Accounts (CSA) for low-income children and currently under consideration by the Washington Legislature.

CSDE Affiliate Alexes Harris, Professor of Sociology, was quoted in KNKX’s story titled “Washington lawmakers seek smoother path to redemption for formerly incarcerated residents,” published last week. Washington State lawmakers are reassessomg who can clear criminal records and when. The New Hope Act would make it easier for people to leave their past behind by cutting wait times and expanding access to the record-clearing process. Harris, who also leads the country on legal debt research, says “You can’t get blood from a stone…There’s no way that someone who is unemployed or underemployed could get out from under this debt.” 

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has issued a Request for Information (RFI) on the potential development of a secure data enclave within the NIH using existing funds. This enclave would allow approved research organizations to access sensitive non-public NIH information such as information on peer review outcomes, grant progress reports, and demographic information of NIH grant applicants. NIH approval would be required for researchers to access the data. Responses can be submitted here by May 30, 2019.