On Friday, May 31st, CSDE celebrated its many graduate students for their accomplishments. We enjoyed delicious nibbles, sharing updates, and reunions with alumni! If you’d like to see all those updates, view the slide presentation or visit the ‘read more’ link, below.

Thank you to all who attended and presented at CSDE’s spring series! CSDE will be pausing its seminar series until Autumn 2024. Stay tuned for upcoming events!  Thank you to our seminar series team – Professor Rawan Arar, Maddie Farris, Jessica Godwin, Jill Fulmore, and Katherine Cheng! Thank to the Evans School for hosting us in Parrington Hall and supporting Katherine Cheng!

In the meantime, keep sending us your news. CSDE E-news will be shifting to a biweekly schedule over the summer.

Join us for a celebration of LaShawnDa Pittman’s new book, “Grandmothering While Black“. Pittman is a sociologist and associate professor in UW’s department of American and Ethnic Studies. Her book explores the complex lives of Black grandmothers raising their children in skipped-generation households (consisting only of grandparents and grandchildren). The discussion and book signing will happen between 4:30-6:00pm in CMU 120, followed by a reception from 6:00-7:00pm in CMU 202. Learn more in the event flyer here!

CSDE Trainee Tom Lindman (Public Policy & Governance) and CSDE Affiliates Anirban Basu (Pharmacy), Anjum Hajat (Epidemiology), Heather Hill (Public Policy & Governance), and Jessica Jones-Smith (Health Systems & Population Health) were awarded a Tier 1 Population Health Initiative Planning Grant for their study, “Paid Family Leave and Parent Mental Health: Evidence from Administrative Data”. Research indicates that when workers have paid time off to care for themselves and others, they have more stable economic circumstances and improved physical health. However, less is known about the effect of access to paid leave on mental health, particularly among parents using leave after the birth of a child. Using WA PFML administrative data and insurance claims from the Washington All Payer Claims Database (APCD) for years 2020-2023, the authors aim to evaluate the impact of paid family leave on the likelihood of parents receiving care for depression and anxiety.

CSDE Affiliates Jenna Van Draanen (Child, Family & Population Health Nursing), Emily Williams (Health Systems and Population Health), Heather Hill (Public Policy & Governance), Ali Rowhani-Rahbar (Epidemiology), and colleagues released research in Drug and Alcohol Dependence, titled “No Change in Substance Use Disorders or Overdose After Implementation of State Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)“. Inadequate income is associated with higher likelihood of experiencing a substance use disorder (SUD). This study tests whether the earned income tax credit (EITC), which issues supplemental income for workers with children in the U.S., is associated with lower rates of SUD and fatal overdose.

CSDE Affiliate Kim Korinek (Sociology, University of Utah) released an article with colleagues in Innovation in Aging, titled “War-related Life Course Stress and Late Life Subjective Age in Northern Vietnam“. The role of early life stressors in subjective aging is weakly understood, especially in low- to middle-income countries. This paper investigated how early life stressors encountered in armed conflict influence subjective age among Vietnamese older adults who experienced war over decades of their early life. Results suggest wartime stressors, especially war’s malevolent environments and severe childhood hunger, experienced in many conflict-affected populations globally, have the potential to subjectively ‘age’ survivors. Yet, not all war exposures are equal, and some may yield psychological and socioeconomic resources that support healthy aging.

CSDE Affiliate Scott Allard (Public Policy & Governance) was quoted in an article by Northwest Public Broadcasting about mailed ballot rejections in Mason County, WA. Despite concerns that the county’s ballot rejections are rising, Allard points to his team’s research which shows that the county’s rejection rate is around the same or below the state average of 1%. Allard discusses various factors that might affect rejection rates such as voters' unfamiliarity with envelope design, signature issues, and the type of election. Read more in the full article by Lauren Gallup. The article also contains an audio version of the story for listening.

CSDE Affiliates Ann Bostrom (Public Policy & Governance) and Nicole Errett (Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences) co-authored new research in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, titled “Coastal emergency managers’ risk perception and decision making for the Tonga distant tsunami“. This article was lead-authored by Ashley Moore, a PhD student in Environmental Health Sciences, and involved several other UW trainees including recent postdoctoral scholar Cassandra Jean (Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences) and master's student Matias Korfmacher (Public Health, Urban Planning). This study looked at coastal emergency managers' risk perception and communications surrounding the distant tsunami caused by the 2022 Tonga volcano eruption. While emergency managers perceived tsunami risk to be low, they took precautionary measures and alerted the public. Study findings show that their actions were driven by community characteristics and anticipated reactions, in addition to unique aspects of the tsunami risk.

CSDE Affiliate Carmen Gonzalez (Communication) co-authored an article in the Journal of Rural and Community Development, titled “Community-Identified Approaches to Improve Access to Telehealth in Rural Communities“. Despite a rapid growth in telehealth adoption in recent years, rural and remote communities still struggle with adoption. To address this issue, authors explored community-identified approaches to improving telehealth access in rural Washington State. Participants described a variety of solutions, prioritizing those that involved training/awareness efforts and healthcare systems engagement. The study's findings provide insight into potential interventions to improve telehealth access in rural communities, considering their potential impact,

Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology (CSDE) is accepting applications to its Graduate Certificate Program in Demographic Methods for the Autumn enrollment in the 2024-2025 Trainee Cohort. Students looking to gain demographic skills and population research experience may choose to apply to the Certificate Program, which is the academic pathway at UW to advanced interdisciplinary training in demography and population research. Upon completion, certificate students will receive official recognition of the Demographic Methods certificate on their transcript.

In spring quarter, CSDE will be hosting a workshop series and several working groups. Students, faculty, and staff are all welcome to register and we welcome registrants from outside the University of Washington for our remote workshops as well.

Please reach out to CSDE’s Training Director, Jessica Godwin (jlg0003@uw.edu), if you have additional workshops you would like to see offered in the future and we will do our best to accommodate those requests. View the schedule as a pdf here.

CSDE Workshops

No remaining workshops this quarter.

CSDE Working Groups

• Computational Demography Working Group
  • Date: Wednesdays @ 9AM-10AM
  • Location: Raitt 223/Zoom
  • Contact: June Yang (jyang32@uw.edu) and Ihsan Kahveci (ikahveci@uw.edu)
• Biomarker Working Group
  • Date: 1st Thursdaysof each month (4/4, 5/2, 6/6) @ 12:30PM-1:30PM
  • Location: Raitt 223
  • Contact: Tiffany Pan (tpan@uw.edu)
• Migration & Settlements Working Group
  • Date: Every other Friday @ 9:00AM starting March 29th
  • Location: Raitt 114/Zoom (meeting link)
  • Contact: Aryaa Rajouria (rajouria@uw.edu)

The NIH will host a virtual workshop on June 6th, 7th, and 11th. This workshop will bring together diverse perspectives from multiple disciplines to explore advantages, barriers, gaps, and opportunities in the future of scientific conferencing for the behavioral and social sciences. The workshop will incorporate innovative evidence-informed approaches to showcase the potential of a virtual platform for learning, networking, and participant engagement. See the full agenda and register here.

The Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) will host workshop on September 3rd in Exeter, United Kingdom as a satellite session of the Conference on Complex Systems. The aim of this satellite session is to bring together researchers from different fields and practitioners from around the world to facilitate a conversation on the use of innovative digital data sources, new methodologies, empirical findings, and critical challenges of studying migration and mobility in the digital era. Organizers welcome submissions of abstracts on ongoing or published work that fit the topics of the event. Authors must submit abstracts by June 10th. Read about the topic and other details here.

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. NIH considers such studies as Basic Experimental Studies with Humans (BESH) that are prospective basic science studies involving human participants that meet the NIH definition of basic research and fall within the NIH definition of clinical trials (see, e.g., NOT-OD-19-024). Applications should not propose a goal of clinical outcomes or products. The link to the call is here.

The Russell Sage Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation seeks to support research on the effects of race, citizenship, legal status and politics, political culture, and public policy on outcomes for immigrants to the U.S. and for the U.S.-born of different racial and ethnic groups and generations. This initiative is part of RSF’s Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration Program which invites proposals on a broader set of issues. Funds can support research assistance, data acquisition, data analysis, and investigator time. Letters of Inquiry are due on June 24th. See more details on the grant 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 a variety of activities. See a list of example activities in the full story!  

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.