Please join us and the Population Health Initiative for short talks and a poster session featuring research from CSDE Trainees and students. The poster session will take place in-person in Green A of the Research Commons in Allen Library South from 12:30-1:30 PM on Friday, Dec 8th. This year’s event features the work of several CSDE Trainees and students:

• Hugo Aguas (PhD student, Sociology): Housing Precariousness Relationships to Household Composition Amongst Hispanic Renters 2020-2023
• Breon Haskett (PhD student, Sociology): Nowhere Bound: Industrial Pull Factors in the US
• Julie Kim (PhD student, Health Metrics): Global Improvements in the Representation of Women in Science Have Stalled
• Bocheng Zhang (PhD student, Economics): Language Assimilation as a Determinant of School Attendance for Immigrant Children

CSDE Affiliate Dr. Gregory Bratman co-authored work with colleagues in Nature Climate Change, titled “Leveraging neuroscience for climate change research“. Anthropogenic climate change poses a substantial threat to societal living conditions. Here, authors argue that neuroscience can substantially contribute to the fight against climate change and provide a framework and a roadmap to organize and prioritize neuroscience research in this domain. 

CSDE Trainee Zoe Pleasure was awarded a grant from the Society of Family Planning to explore the use of TikTok to discuss perceived and experienced side effects of hormonal contraceptive methods. Pleasure and team will employ a tiered search approach to identify videos discussing contraceptive side effects on TikTok. They will analyze these videos’ textual and video components using thematic content analysis techniques. By analyzing user-generated content on TikTok, this study aims to leverage a frequently used but under-researched data source to contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of how people perceive and experience side effects.

CSDE Affiliate Dr. Isabelle Cohen had two grants funded by the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA) to support collaborative projects in Ghana. The first, Solar Lantern Program: Sensitization and Willingness to Pay by Rural Households in Ghana, is a collaborative project with Hamdiyah Alhassan, Ishaque Mahama, Isaac Doku, Oyeteju Odufuwa, and the Ministry of Energy in Ghana. The second, Impact of environmental, health, and safety sensitization on Liquefied Petroleum Gas usage in Ghana, is a collaborative project with Isaac Doku, Hamdiyah Alhassan, Mohammed Nuhu Mujtaba, Genesis Kollie and the Ministry of Energy in Ghana.

CSDE Affiliate Dr. Mia Bennett (Geography) co-authored research led by her former PhD student, Dr. Xiaofeng Liu, in Eurasian Geography and Economics, titled “Going out and going green: NGOs in the environmental governance of Global China“. While the roles of actors such as the state and state-owned enterprises within “Global China” elicit significant scholarly attention, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are relatively less critiqued. These members of Chinese civil society are playing an increasingly important role in the environmental governance of the country’s overseas activities.

CSDE Affiliate Dr. Alison Roxby (Global Health and Medicine) recently published two articles with colleagues on bacterial vaginosis amongst adolescent girls and women in Kenya. Bacterial vaginosis is a risk factor for sexually transmitted infections, including HIV. Read more about each in the full story! 

CSDE Affiliate Dr. Alison Fohner (Epidemiology) and co-authors released research in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, titled “Proteome Network Analysis Identifies Potential Biomarkers for Brain Aging“. Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD) involve biological processes that begin years to decades before onset of clinical symptoms. The plasma proteome can offer insight into brain aging and risk of incident dementia among cognitively healthy adults. This study sought to identify biomarkers and biological pathways associated with neuroimaging measures and incident dementia in two large community-based cohorts by applying a correlation-based network analysis to the plasma proteome.

CSDE Affiliate Dr. Claire Rothschild (Population Services International) and colleagues released their research in Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters, “Assessing acceptability and effectiveness of a pleasure-oriented sexual and reproductive health chatbot in Kenya: an exploratory mixed-methods study“. Integrating pleasure may be a successful strategy for reaching young people with sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) interventions. However, sexual pleasure-related programming and research remains sparse. Authors aimed to assess chatbot acceptability and describe changes in SRHR attitudes and behaviours among Kenyan young adults engaging with a pleasure-oriented SRHR chatbot.

CSDE Affiliate Dr. Grace John-Stewart (Global Health, Epidemiology, Medicine, and Pediatrics) co-authored research in the Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, titled “Maternal HIV Status and Risk of Infant Mycobacterium Tuberculosis Infection as Measured by Tuberculin Skin Test“. Dr. Jerphason Mecha (Kenya Medical Research Institute) and Dr. Sylvia LaCourse also played key roles as authors on this article. The effect of maternal HIV on infant Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) infection risk is not well-characterized.

Each quarter, CSDE offers 3-5 workshops on data sources, statistical and biomarker methodology, introductions to analysis programs, 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.

There is just one more workshop on Wednesday, Dec 6th. CSDE is happy to accommodate a few more registrants (register here).

• Lunch & Learn: Telomere Length as a Measure of Environmental Exposures
  • Date & Time: Wednesday, Dec. 6 @ 12:30-1:30PM
  • Location 223 Raitt Hall
  • Instructor: Dan Eisenberg
  • Co-sponsor: Population Health Initiative
  • Summary: Telomere length is frequently considered as a biomarker of stress and aging. Join us for lunch and a presentation that will critically review mechanisms and findings linking telomere length with environmentally stressors. Please register by Dec. 5th.

On December 6 from 3:30-4:30 pm Kaiping Chen, an Assistant Professor in Computational Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will join CDWG to discuss how to apply computational methods (e.g., NLP, computer vision, network) to examine equity in science communication from digital media to conversational AI. CDWG Will be Hybrid in Fall Quarter 2023. The discussion will take place in 223 Raitt Hall (The Demography Lab) and on Zoom (register here).

Population Research Planning Grants (PRPGs) are designed to provide in-kind support and/or funds of up to $25k* to support a wide array of activity types throughout the development of a research project. As part of our mission to complement rather than duplicate other campus opportunities such as the Population Health Initiative seed grants, we will consider funding things activities such as:

• Use of CSDE services beyond the standard allotments for affiliates. This could include statistical or computational consultations, administrative and logistical support, computer accounts, software purchases that contribute to the general good, virtual server capacity that contributes to the general good, communication or webinar support, etc.
• Convening a group of scholars for a grant writing retreat or to brainstorm a possible new research collaboration
• Hiring an RA to analyze data for discussion in the Preliminary Data section of a grant application
• Small pilot research, when relationship to future funding requests are clearly laid out. Note that research that is well suited to an existing pilot research mechanism on campus should be submitted to that mechanism, with an optional request of matching support from CSDE (see below).
• Publication-related fees (when no other funding is available). NEW THIS YEAR: requests for publication fees will only be considered for publications that involve at least one CSDE affiliate and at least one CSDE trainee, and which are targeted to a demography-oriented journal or comparable outlet.
• Travel (when specifically enhancing research project development)
• Many others; just ask!

CSDE Matching Support includes in-kind or monetary support to accompany a submission to other on-campus funding mechanism, such as PHI, EarthLab, or Urban@UW. All projects must have a CSDE affiliate who is UW faculty and is listed as a PI or co-PI, with any number of other collaborators. Note that we require (PRPGs) or strongly suggest (matching funds) contacting either Development Core Director (Steven Goodreau) or CSDE Director (Sara Curran) to discuss possibilities for your specific proposal before submission.

Have a funded project and need some help collecting primary data? Talk to Danielle Woodward – Director of the Survey Research Division at the Social Development Research Group (SDRG), which is connected to UW’s School of Social Work. SDRG can provide many different services to support research, including: recruitment and data collection for surveys across many modalities health measurement and bio-specimen collection; and, sample tracking/subject locating. Email Danielle at dgangnes@uw.edu.

Eliseo J. Pérez-Stable, M.D., director of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD), designated people with disabilities as a population with health disparities for research supported by the National Institutes of Health. The decision was made in consultation with Robert Otto Valdez, Ph.D., the director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, after careful consideration of a report delivered by an NIMHD advisory council, input from the disability community and a review of the science and evidence.

The East-West Center is pleased to announce the following opportunities for study and scholarships at the Center starting in August 2024. For more than sixty years, East-West Center students have developed lifelong relationships and a powerful sense of community with others who share a commitment to the US-Indo-Pacific region. 

Join UW Data Science on Tuesday, December 5th for their final UW Data Science Seminar of 2023 with Jimmy Phuong, MSPH, PhD, who is Acting Assistant Professor of UW Biomedical and Health Informatics. The seminar will be held in person in the UW Physics/Astronomy Auditorium A102 from 4:30 to 5:20 p.m. Pacific. Learn more about Dr. Phuong’s seminar here.

This year’s Wittgenstein Centre Conference on “Exploring Population Heterogeneities” will take place December 6-7 in a hybrid format. The registration for online participation is still available. The keynote speakers are Ridhi Kashyap, University of Oxford, Anna Matysiak, University of Warsaw and Iñaki Permanyer, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Find the detailed agenda. Register for online participation.

This workshop hosted by Northwest Climate Adaptation Science Center will take place on Tues. Dec 12th from 10:00-11:30AM on Zoom (register here). Are you a researcher engaging with non-academic partners to develop science that meets real-world needs? If so, you may have noticed that the traditional format of scientific CVs, focused on comprehensive lists of publications and presentations, makes it challenging to convey the distinct skills, activities and products associated with your societally engaged research.

NIH is requesting information on the utility and usability of sample language and accompanying considerations developed for use in informed consent documents for digital health technologies utilized in research. See the full RFI here.

The Open Scholarship Commons Community Fellows Workshop Series is a paid fellowship opportunity for  graduate students underrepresented in the field of open scholarship. The goal of this Fellowship is to lift up students as experts in this field and create opportunities for peer to peer learning by offering student-led workshops. Equity is a core value of the UW Libraries Open Scholarship Commons, and this Fellowship, funded by the UW Diversity Council, aims to support the expertise and leadership of underrepresented students in the field of open scholarship.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Environmental Justice Working Group invites feedback on the approaches NIH Institutes, Centers, and Offices can take to support research and capacity building efforts to advance environmental justice in the U.S. and globally. Additionally, Request for Information (RFI) responses will enable the NIH Environmental Justice Working Group to be responsive to Executive Order 14096 on Revitalizing Our Nation’s Commitment to Environmental Justice for All, and to synergize NIH efforts with other Federal Agencies in a whole-of-government approach to advance environmental justice.

Applications are now open for the 2023-24 Latinx Scholars Graduate School Fellowship (LSGF). LSGF awards are hosted by the Office of Graduate Student Equity & Excellence (GSEE) (formerly GO-MAP). In 2013, a group of engaged, committed UW faculty, civic, and business leaders joined together to establish the Latinx Scholars Graduate School Fellowship to provide financial assistance to UW graduate students (master’s and doctoral) who have a demonstrated commitment to Latinx communities.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP) and the University of California, Davis’s Center for Poverty & Inequality Research (CPIR) invite applications for the 2024 National Research Center on Poverty and Economic Mobility Early-Career Mentoring Institute (ECMI). This weeklong convening between June 3-7, held in Davis, California, will provide valuable mentoring and career development opportunities to poverty and social mobility scholars who are in the early stages of their research careers and who have the potential for leadership in supporting members of populations that are underrepresented among academic researchers.

Applications are open for EarthLab’s Innovation Grants Program! EarthLab is an institute at the UW College of the Environment taking equitable action on climate change. The Innovation Grants Program invests in collaborations that span academic disciplines, engage multiple sectors and center community questions at the intersection of climate change and social justice. This program is an excellent opportunity for community-engaged research. Learn more about the grant here!

The William T. Grant Foundation updated 2024 application guidelines are now online and detail what applicants need to know to develop a strong letter of inquiry for the Foundation’s research grants on reducing inequality and improving the use of research evidence. The next deadline to submit a letter of inquiry is January 10, 2024.

The conference committee is currently accepting abstracts for the 2024 University of Maryland Time Use Conference on June 13-14 in College Park, Maryland. Submissions are due by January 12, 2024, at 11:59 PM ET. For more information, please view the Call for Papers. Time is a critical but under-researched aspect of racial and ethnic disparities in daily life, including social and public interactions, health and well-being. The focus of the 2024 University of Maryland (UMD) Time Use Conference will be using time use and well-being data to investigate temporal dimensions of racial and ethnic inequities and structural racism.

The purpose of this tier of grants is to support faculty and PI-eligible staff to develop preliminary data or proof-of-concept needed to pursue follow-on funding to scale one’s efforts. Awards of up to $50,000 per project – or $65,000 per project for teams proposing meaningful partnerships with community-based organizations – will be available with a project period of up to 12 months. One award during the winter 2024 cycle will be reserved specifically for an internationally-focused project through our partnership with the UW Office of Global Affairs.

The Friends of the Market (FOM) has initiated the Fall 2023-2024 round of the Steinbrueck-Thonn Award for Pike Place Market Research, an academic research award available to current college students and recent graduates. The Steinbrueck-Thonn Award is intended to encourage a broad range of cross-disciplinary and community-engaged scholarship related to the Pike Place Market; research that will serve as a catalyst for greater understanding of and appreciation for this treasured public resource.

The NMFS-Sea Grant Joint Fellowship Program in Population and Ecosystem Dynamics and Marine Resource Economics places PhD students studying in one of two priority areas in three-year, research-based fellowships. The program is designed to fulfill workforce development needs identified by the NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and since 1990 has provided opportunities for 126 PhD students. The fellowship period will occur between Aug 1st of 2024 to July 31st of 2027 and applications are due on Jan 25th of 2024.

Applications are now open for the University of Washington Future Rivers graduate training program beginning Autumn quarter 2024! Any prospective (incoming fall quarter 2024) or current PhD or Masters students in any discipline at the University of Washington are encouraged to apply. Future Rivers is a graduate training program building skills in data science, science communication, and social justice to bridge work across all fields to better solve today’s freshwater sustainability challenges.

The Dissertation Research Grants program supports innovative and high-quality dissertation research that addresses questions relevant to any of RSF’s priority areas: Behavioral Science and Decision Making in Context; Future of Work; Race, Ethnicity and Immigration; Immigration and Immigrant Integration; and Social, Political, and Economic Inequality. 

The NSF and NIH is offering awards as part of the The Incorporating Human Behavior in Epidemiological Models (IHBEM) Program. The IHBEM Program supports research that incorporates research on social and behavioral processes in mathematical epidemiological models. The program provides support for projects that involve balanced participation from the mathematical sciences and from the social, behavioral, and economic sciences. They are interested in interdisciplinary collaborations integrating research on behavioral and/or social processes in mathematical epidemiological models.

The International Research Experiences for Students (IRES) program supports international research and research-related activities for U.S. science and engineering students. The IRES program contributes to development of a diverse, globally engaged workforce with world-class skills. IRES focuses on active research participation by undergraduate and/or graduate students in high quality international research, education and professional development experiences in NSF-funded research areas. 

The program is open to graduate students and sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Sea Grant College Program. It enables fellows to work for one year on congressional staff or in a federal agency, where the fellows study, implement, and even create marine policy. More than 40 agency positions and 12 congressional positions are available each year. A virtual information session will be held on Dec. 11th at 12pm (register here).

This opportunity supports administrative supplements to existing NIH awards to support scientists who have demonstrated compelling commitments and contributions to mentorship and enhancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) in the biomedical sciences. Funds will support ongoing and future efforts.

The NIH is encouraging grant applications to support the evaluation of the utility and validity of digital health and artificial intelligence (AI) tools and technologies in epidemiological, clinical, and intervention research. The intent is to support the addition of new measurement modalities to evaluate existing and recently developed but not yet validated digital health and AI tools such as sensor technologies, smartphone applications, software as a medical device (SaMD), and AI algorithms.

The Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science (IAPHS) is accepting panel and abstract submissions from December 1, 2023 to March 10, 2024 for their fall Conference “Tackling declining life expectancy in the US: investigating social drivers and policy solutions”. They are also calling for abstract reviewers and award nominations. Learn more about each of these opportunities in the full story.

The Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences (CSSS) will be recognizing its 25th anniversary this academic year. In addition to highlighting special themes during the seminar series, CSSS will hold a celebratory event on campus on May 16th & 17th, 2024 that will bring alums, friends, and campus partners together with workshops, poster sessions, scientific sessions, and ample opportunities for socializing. Please note these dates in your calendar and keep your eyes posted for more details. 

This funding opportunity announcement invites research projects that seek to explain the underlying mechanisms, processes, and trajectories of social relationships and how these factors affect outcomes in human health, illness, recovery, and overall wellbeing. Types of projects submitted under this FOA include studies that prospectively assign human participants to conditions (i.e., experimentally manipulate independent variables) and that assess biomedical and/or behavioral outcomes in humans to understand fundamental aspects of phenomena related to social connectedness and isolation.

The NIH released three opportunities for funding to study the ethical, legal and social implications (ELSI) of human genetic or genomic research. Learn about each of these opportunities in the full story!

The NIH is seeking to fund research to test innovative approaches to implementing SBIRT/P for alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs (ATOD) use and misuse in adult populations that experience health disparities. SBIRT/P, (a term used for purposes of this funding announcement), involves screening individuals for risk of ATOD use and misuse, briefly intervening with a conversation about harmful substance use, and referring individuals for treatment or preventive services, as needed. Proposed research should include prospective tests of SBIRT/P and should leverage collaborations with healthcare and community partners Specific research interests of participating NIH ICOs are detailed within.