CSDE’s Executive Committee members are very concerned about the consequences for population health resulting from the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, which effectively overturned Roe v Wade.  For three generations, people in the U.S. have had the legal right to access abortions as part of their reproductive health choices.  While the right to abortion has been in place for several generations, people of color, poor people, and people in rural areas have had little access to abortions.  Furthermore, access has been eroding across the U.S.  The consequences of these health disparities are well documented, showing just how important abortion and the full array of reproductive health services is crucial for the well-being of people and their families. Both the Population Association of America and the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population have each released statements documenting that evidence.  In Washington abortion remains legal and Washington law requires that health provision and insurance cover abortion care.  While abortion care facilities have grown since 2014, 10% of Washington women live in counties without any services (Guttmacher Institute).  UW Medicine also posted a statement that recognizes its unique role in the region and the region’s needs for quality, comprehensive health care.  For our part, CSDE will continue to support the very best demographic scholarship that increases knowledge about the causes and consequences of health disparities and translate those findings for policy and program impact. We must continue that effort!

CSDE Affiliate Emma Riley was recently awarded a research grant by the NSF to pursue a study of a village-level anti-poverty program. This research asks whether extreme poverty be effectively reduced if everyone in a community is included in an anti-poverty program, rather than only the poorest. The authors will also be able to shed light on the question of whether the causes of persistent poverty are specific to individual households or are common within a community and to what extent there are synergies in tackling poverty of everyone in a community at once. The study will use a Randomized Control Trial of a village-level anti-poverty program with nearly 4,000 households across 354 villages in rural Uganda. The authors will examine the effects of the program 2 years after its start, focusing on the effects on household poverty, income and wealth as well as women’s empowerment.

CSDE Training Core PI Zack Almquist is quoted in a recent Seattle Times article related to his involvement in estimating the city’s homeless population. Almquist has been working with the King County Regional Homeless Authority on an alternative method to the Point-in-Time count used to receive funding from HUD. Almquist and the Authority’s estimates for 2022 are instead based on respondent-driven sampling, and still find a 14% increase from 2020 population estimates.

CSDE Affiliate Ann Bostrom has recently published three articles with a number of co-authors. First, in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, Bostrom and others present a scoping review of methods used to elicit individuals' mental models of science or risk. The second study, published in Weather, Climate, and Society, aims to improve the usability and applicability of National Weather Service forecast information in the context of NWS core partners’ decisions during tropical cyclone threats. The research collected and analyzed data from in-depth interviews with broadcast meteorologists and emergency managers in 3 coastal U.S. states. The final article introduces the National Science Foundation (NSF) AI Institute for Research on Trustworthy AI in Weather, Climate, and Coastal Oceanography (AI2ES). To date AI2ES is the only NSF AI institute focusing on environmental science applications and focuses on developing trustworthy AI methods for weather, climate, and coastal hazards.

CSDE Affiliate Emily Williams and a number of co-authors recently published new research on the relationship between substance use disorders and economic and social stressors amongst transgender veterans. The authors describe the prevalence of eight individual-level social and economic stressors (barriers to accessing care, economic hardship, housing instability, homelessness, social and family problems, legal problems, military sexual trauma, and other victimization) among transgender patients in the national VA records with and without alcohol use disorder and drug use disorder (alone and in combination). They consider these totals overall and compared to cisgender patients in a national sample of VA outpatients.

CSDE Trainee Ian Kennedy, with CSDE Affiliates Emma Spiro, and Jevin West and others, have co-authored a publication in Nature Human Behavior called "Combining interventions to reduce the spread of viral misinformation." Misinformation online poses a range of threats, from subverting democratic processes to undermining public health measures. The authors provide a framework to evaluate interventions aimed at reducing viral misinformation online both in isolation and when used in combination.

CSDE seeks a Computational Demographer to join its Scientific Core. This position will have a joint role and complementary responsibilities within the UW eScience Institute.  This position provides methodological support to faculty and graduate students studying demographic processes and their connections to population health dynamics, as well as leadership on innovative new projects consistent with the scientific emphases of CSDE and eScience.  It requires broad social science research skills, advanced computational skills, and an orientation towards service and facilitation of research.  The successful candidate will provide support for researchers in the areas of responsible conduct of research, transparent science, data construction, statistical and/or machine learning training, demographic forecasting and probabilistic modeling.

CSDE is also looking for a full time Administrator and a full-time Program Coordinator to support our population science research infrastructure center funded by the NICHD.

With the Director, the Administrator is a primary point person for the development, coordination and implementation of center-wide efforts (including infrastructure and training grants, as well as reporting for internal and external purposes).  The Administrator is the chief financial officer and business manager responsible for financial planning, management and overseeing daily center operations, acting independently and responsibly, given general direction from the Director and within the University's policies and procedures. These responsibilities include departmental administration, business planning, financial management, personnel, research project support and other functions as necessary.

The Program Coordinator will provide program support for CSDE staff and Affiliates while managing day-to-day functions of the Center. The Program Coordinator will report to the Administrator, but will also support the director, CSDE staff and affiliates as needed. As such, the successful candidate will have the capacity to interact with a client base from a wide variety of units and seniority, and communicate effectively about the services & mission priorities of CSDE.