Join us for light refreshments and ’shout outs', as we celebrate CSDE’s accomplished trainees! We’ll be awarding Demographic Methods Certificates, as well as congratulating soon-to-graduate trainees, trainees headed off for exciting summer activities, and other accomplishments. We’ll be sharing these accomplishments in-person in Room 101 of the Hans Rosling Center, but you may also join for the formal program online. However, wouldn’t it be more fun to meet in person?

Room 101 is a large space where we will have the doors and windows wide open and there will be plenty of ventilation for our in-person attendees, along with recommended masks, affording safe interactions and good community building!

Last week, The Journals of Gerontology published a special issue: "Why Does Health in the US Continue to Lag Behind?" CSDE Affiliate Melissa Martinson, CSDE Trainees Jessica Lapham and Hazal Ercin-Swearinger, and co-authors Julien Teitler and Nancy Reichman contributed an article titled "Generational Shifts in Young Adult Cardiovascular Health? Millennials and Generation X in the United States and England." The study finds that while Millennials generally fared worse than their Gen X counterparts in terms of obesity and diabetes risk, especially in the United States, they had lower rates of smoking and high cholesterol in both countries.

On May 23, UW Today highlighted CSDE Training Core PI & Executive Committee Member Zack Almquist and his colleagues for their continued work on heterogeneity of COVID transmission across communities. This like of Almquist's work began with this 2020 article on spatial heterogeneity in infection timing and severity, highlighted in the CSDE newsletter here. More recently, Almquist and his co-authors published the article on the distribution of social cohesion across space, also featured in our newsletter.

CSDE’s northern, neighboring undergraduate demographic training program at Western Washington University has renamed its lab to the Tedrow Lab for Demographic and Social Research. The Center for Social Science Instruction/Demographic Research Laboratory was directed by Lucky Tedrow between 1977 – 2018. Under Tedrow’s leadership, the lab was responsible for launching the careers of many demographic scholars with important contributions to the field. CSDE Affiliate Matt Hall (Cornell) and former PAA President Doug Massey are among the famous alums. Upon Tedrow's retirement, the Department voted to rename the lab in honor of his important contributions to the Department of Sociology at WWU. Director Tedrow mentored hundreds of students in population data analysis, statistical computing, and demographic research. He was the Principal Investigator on multiple grants funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. His research on fertility, the military, divorce and family change, and demographic forecasting was published as dozens of journal articles, book chapters, and a co-authored book. Director Tedrow established the largest endowed scholarship in the history of the Sociology Department. This scholarship provides funding each year for demography students, creating a legacy that supports future generations of demographers. In 2022, this scholarship was renamed as the “Lucky Tedrow Demography Scholarship” to celebrate Director Tedrow’s accomplishments.

The Anthropology Department recently highlighted the work of CSDE Trainee Delaney Glass in their news updates. Glass is featured for her role producing the Human Biology Association's Sausage of Science (SoS) Podcast, dedicated to disseminating anthropological science to broader audiences. The feature quotes Glass emphasizing the importance of sharing knowledge about the discipline, particularly with respect to “the theory-driven perspectives we take and the way we do community-engaged work. The focus in our discipline is centered around embracing and understanding contextual and temporal drivers of human  variability.”

This summer 8 population researchers will take part in a grant writing workshop hosted by CSDE and directed by Dr. Steven Goodreau with support from CSDE’s Grants Manager Belinda Sachs. The program provides guidance and direction, peer mentoring, and senior mentoring in developing an NIH grant application from start to finish.  Congratulations to the following workshop participants and best wishes for a productive summer: Mienah Sharif (Epidemiology), Arjee Restar (Epidemiology), LaTonya Trotter (Bioethics and School of Medicine), Yuan Hsiao (Communications), Emma Riley (Economics), Caislin Firth (Alcohol, Drugs and Addictions Institute), Marie Spiker (Nutritional Sciences), and Ole Hexel (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research).  To learn more about the program visit the summer grant writing workshop page.

The Center for Girls’ Education (CGE) in Abuja, Nigeria provides mentored safe spaces to adolescent girls, aimed at increasing empowerment and improving human capital and health. This research is focused on a quantitative impact assessment of two mentoring programs delivered through CGE, using paired cluster-randomized designs. In particular, data has been collected from a 2018 baseline survey and 2020 endline survey for Pathways and is currently being used to analyze the impacts of the program on adolescent girls; early results are promising with regards to delaying marriage and increasing education. Read a full description of the opportunity and CGE here.

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