CSDE Affiliate Greg Bratman (Environmental and Forest Sciences) will be presenting in this week’s seminar on Friday, April 26th from 12:30-1:30 PM in 360 Parrington Hall and on Zoom (register here). This seminar is co-sponsored by The Population Health Initiative. Bratman is the director of the Environment and Well-Being Lab. His work takes place at the nexus of psychology, public health and ecology, and is focused on investigating the ways in which the environment is associated with human well-being.

CSDE Affiliates Alison Drake (Global Health), Elizabeth Harrington (Obstetrics and Gynecology), and CSDE Trainee Aparna Seth (Global Health) co-authored an article in Plos One, entitled “Mobile solutions to Empower reproductive life planning for women living with HIV in Kenya (MWACh EMPOWER): Protocol for a cluster randomized controlled trial“. Women living with HIV (WLWH) face unique reproductive health (RH) barriers which increase their risks of unmet need for contraception, contraceptive failure, unintended pregnancy, and pregnancy-related morbidity and mortality and may prevent them from achieving their reproductive goals. Patient-centered counseling interventions that support health care workers (HCWs) in providing high-quality RH counseling, tailored to the needs of WLWH, may improve reproductive health outcomes. Authors conduct a non-blinded cluster randomized controlled trial (cRCT) of a digital health intervention for WLWH.

CSDE Affiliate Avanti Adhia (Nursing) released an article with colleagues in the European Journal of Psychotraumatology, entitled “Developing and implementing survivor-centred approaches for college student-athletes: perspectives from athletic department, Title IX, and campus advocacy personnel“. The article was lead-authored by Anna Bender, a postdoctoral scholar in UW's School of Medicine, and senior-authored by Alice Ellyson in the Department of Pediatrics. Sexual violence (SV) is a persistent issue on US college campuses, particularly among college student-athletes. Strategies to address SV are urgently needed. Yet, prior research shows that many university practices can be more harmful than helpful to SV survivors and necessitates a reimagination of how institutions support SV survivors. Survivor-centred approaches may be one way to effectively address SV for students, including student-athletes, across college campuses. This qualitative study explored campus personnel experiences with and perceptions of survivor-centred SV prevention and intervention policies and practices on college campuses and examined how these approaches serve SV survivors, including college student-athletes.

CSDE Affiliate Peter P. Vitaliano (Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences) published an article with co-authors in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, entitled “Impact of informal caregiving on depressive symptoms among a national cohort of men“. There is evidence that unpaid caregiving can have negative effects on the mental health of female caregivers; however, evidence of impacts on male caregivers is limited. This study addressed this gap by using a prospective population study to examine associations between becoming a caregiver and depressive symptoms in 12,000 Australian men.

CSDE Affiliate David Swanson (Sociology, UC Riverside) published a brief research note in Communications in Applied Geometry, entitled “A Geometric Expression of Taylor’s Law“. In this brief research note, Swanson provides a geometric expression of Taylor's Law, which is a widely observed empirical pattern that relates variance to the mean in sets of non-negative measurements via an approximate power function.

CSDE Affiliate Gregg Colburn (Real Estate, UW) co-authored an editorial with Margot Kushel in The Hill, entitled “Affordable housing is the solution to homelessness, not criminalization“. Authors published the editorial in light of upcoming arguments in Grants Pass vs. Johnson, a U.S. Supreme Court Case which will determine whether local governments can make it a crime to live outside when adequate shelter is not available. In the editorial, Colburn and Kushel discuss how criminalization is often an ineffective solution to homelessness in place of the obvious solution - affordable housing.

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.

Spring Workshop Series

• Survey Methods 1: Online Survey Design & Administration with REDCap
  • Mondays April 22nd and 29th @1:30PM-3:30PM
• Agent Based Modeling in R
  • Tuesday, April 23rd @ 10:00AM-11:30AM
• Introduction to Actigraphy in Population Research
  • Thursday, April 25th @ 2:00PM-3:30PM

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)

CSDE’s Data Science and Demography T32 Fellowship program is accepting applications for a 12-month fellowship for AY 2024-25. This training program is ideal for pre-doctoral candidates who have strong interests in gaining methodological training in data analytics and with research interests in the social determinants or social structural factors linked to population well-being, population health, or demography. The program provides mentoring and support for trainees pursuing scientific careers in relevant academia, government, or private sector organizations.

Applications are now open for this program, which assists scholars in preparing applications to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). More info here, and application page here. Past participants report great success, and lots of support and even fun along the way. Applying to the GWSP is open to CSDE affiliates (UW and external) as well as to local post-docs writing K awards with one or more CSDE affiliates on their mentoring team.

The eScience Institute is pleased to announce the Fellows selected for the inaugural Open Scholarship Commons Community Fellows Workshop Series, along with their workshops! 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 and create opportunities for peer to peer learning by offering student-led workshops. This Fellowship, funded by the UW Diversity Council, aims to support the expertise and leadership of underrepresented students in the field of open scholarship. See the full schedule of workshops here!

The Russell Sage Foundation is offering two opportunities to be a visiting scholar/researcher in residence at RSF in New York City. The first opportunity is RSF’s Visiting Scholars Program for the 2025-2026 academic year (apps due June 25, 2024). The Visiting Scholars program is a unique opportunity for junior and senior scholars to spend a year (or a semester) in residence at RSF pursuing research examining essential questions on social, economic, and political life in the United States.

Join the College of Built Environments for our inaugural Community of Practice Climate Solutions Symposium on May 23rd from 5:00-7:00pm. Register here! Students, faculty, and other experts will engage in exciting discussions about climate research, teaching, and learning initiatives currently underway. They invite poster presentations and welcome submissions that showcase noteworthy contributions in teaching, research, and university initiatives concerning the climate crisis, climate solutions, and technologies within the field of climate studies. Submit posters by May 8th here.

CSSS welcomes you to attend a seminar with Sarah Glick on Wednesday, May 8th from 12:30-1:30 PM in 409 Savery and on Zoom. Dr. Sara Glick is an Associate Professor in the University of Washington’s School of Medicine and an epidemiologist in the HIV/STI/HCV Program at Public Health – Seattle & King County (PHSKC). Her research focuses on health outcomes related to injection drug use and harm reduction interventions. Read more about Glick’s talk on the event page here.

Natural hazards compounded by changing climates, rising populations, expanding demands for resources, and increasing reliance on technology are putting our economy, well-being, and national security at risk. The goal of Confronting Hazards, Impacts and Risks for a Resilient Planet (CHIRRP) (PD 24-297Y) is to help safeguard communities and ecosystems for a resilient planet by supporting the co-design of projects that deliver evidence-based, actionable solution pathways reducing the risk from earth system hazards compounded by global environmental change.

The Washington Sea Grant Hershman Fellowship offers a unique educational opportunity for soon-to-graduate or recently finished graduate students engaged in studies pertaining to ocean and coastal policy issues. This one-year (fall 2024-fall 2025), paid marine policy fellowship matches highly motivated, qualified individuals with host agencies, nonprofits or tribes throughout Washington State. The Washington Sea Grant Hershman Fellowship offers students first-hand experiences in crafting marine and natural resource policies and allows them to share their academic expertise with their host offices.

The Population Health Initiative has released a special spring quarter funding call for pilot projects that seek to accelerate the application of large language models and generative artificial intelligence to seemingly intractable grand challenges in the areas of human health, environmental resilience, and social and economic equity. Awards of up to $100,000 each are available to UW researchers for interdisciplinary projects that propose exploratory research that serves the public good. Applications are due Friday, May 10, 2024. Learn more by visiting the funding call’s web page. 

The NICHD has listed many grant opportunities that should be of interest to CSDE affiliates. Check out the list here. If you are interested, CSDE can help you with providing ‘eyes’ for feedback on the narrative, contacting a program officer, more formalized mock review panel of experts to provide feedback on a penultimate draft, a summer grant writing program, or scientific methods consultations. We’re happy to support your science! Just ask!

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.