This week, CSDE’s seminar is a panel discussion about policy analytics and population health. The COVID-19 pandemic and natural disasters have revealed major underlying policy challenges for addressing underlying systemic shortcomings related to population health. Policy analytics acknowledges the complexities of the policy domain and offers some new ways to innovate around population health solutions. This week’s panel includes UW researchers from political science, health metrics, and environmental and occupational health. CSDE Affiliate and Executive Committee Member Professor Anjum Hajat will moderate the panel. Here is the line-up for this week:

Chris Adolph & Beatrice Magistro will present “Pandemic Politics: Understanding State-Level Social Distancing Policies and Mask Mandates in Response to COVID-19″

Ali Mokdad will present “IHME COVID-19 Model: Strategies to Control the Pandemic”

Nicole Errett, Scott Miles & Youngjun Choe will present “Integrating Physical Activity Data in Disaster Recovery Planning and Implementation”

Register for the Zoom seminar here.

In a new study by CSDE Affiliates Elena Erosheva, Carole Lee and Statistics PhD student Sheridan Grant, the team has found significant Black-White difference in NIH Grant Award Outcomes. The team’s NIH R01 project has yielded several publications. Most recently, in their study, which sampled from over 54,000 R01 applications submitted between 2014-2016 by Black and White investigators, they assessed whether investigator race explains any part of the criterion scoring differences in the review process and how criterion scores are combined to produce the final review score. They used an exact matching approach to arrive at balanced samples and then a multilevel modeling analyses to evaluate outcomes. They find that funding award decisions for Black scientists is 55% lower than that for white scientists.

How does neighborhood change influence an individual’s wellbeing? What does this mean for their mental health? How do processes of urban displacement complicate our understanding of the neighborhood effects health framework? These are the types of questions that CSDE Trainee Maxine K. Wright aims to explore.

Maxine received her B.A. in Philosophy, Neuroscience, and Psychology, an interdisciplinary program at Washington University in St. Louis and is currently a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Washington, working on her M.A. under the supervision of CSDE Affiliate and Professor of Sociology Jerald R. Herting. As a BIPOC scholar, Maxine is committed to applied research and using her research to empower the communities she studies in order to facilitate change. She takes an interdisciplinary and mixed-methods approach to her sociological research, and benefited from the mentorship of CSDE Director Sara Curran, particularly with regards to qualitative methods. She is a trainee in CSDE's Graduate Certificate in Demographic Methods.

This year, Maxine is providing crucial support for CSDE as the organizer of CSDE Lightning Talks & Poster Session for Fall quarter. And don’t forget! CSDE trainees and other graduate students can submit project proposals for this quarter’s Lightning Talks & Poster Session HERE by Friday, October 23rd!