Archives: Affiliates

Heather Hill is a Professor in the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance. She has a BA (political science) from UW, a Master’s in Public Policy from the University of Michigan, and a PhD in Human Development and Social Policy from Northwestern University. Her research examines how public and workplace policies influence family economic circumstances and child well-being and development in low-income families. Hill conducts experimental, quasi-experimental and non-experimental research using both quantitative and qualitative data. Her training and research orientation are fundamentally multidisciplinary and population-focused. Her work has been published in top journals, including the Journal of Public Policy and Management, Demography, Work and Occupations, the American Journal of Epidemiology, and the Journal of Health Economics. At CSDE, Hill serves on the Executive Committee and as chair of the primary research area on the Wellbeing of Households and Families. She also serves on the Executive Council of the University of Washington’s Public Health Initiative.

Jerald Herting’s research over the past two decades has primarily focused on adolescent health and mental health behaviors evaluating health promotion intervention programs and exploring the role of social/environmental context on these health and related behaviors, both at the individual and aggregate level. This work has also included examining the successful life course transition from adolescence to young adulthood. Recently Herting has also initiated projects directed at studying healthy aging and frailty in the aged population. In the last decade he has published on adolescent health behaviors in Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, Journal of Research on Adolescence, Biodemography and Social Biology, American Journal of Health Behavior, among others. His recent work on healthy aging has appeared in Journal of the American Geriatrics Society and the Journal of Physical Activity and Health. Herting has a set of NIH funded collaborative projects recently completed and currently underway. One current study is a longitudinal study examining the development of depression across early to late adolescence, with a focus on the interplay of other adolescent physical changes, as well as changes in school/social settings; this work is in collaboration with colleagues at the UW’s Schools of Medicine and Public Health. A second set of studies explored the long-term follow-up of a stratified sample of high-risk and non-risk youth from adolescence (aged 13-17) to young adulthood (aged 25-29) with particular emphasis on mental health and substance use, but included exploring adult transitions to independent housing, union formation, and child-bearing. Work has pointed to statistical classes of adolescents who experience persistent poor mental health, while subsets experience desistence. The role of early trauma and early transition to adult statuses play a negative role in successful transitions to additional schooling, consistent employment, and additional health problems. As part of Herting’s new research direction on healthy aging, he has been involved in a set of work looking the health of older women. This work includes colleagues in the UW’s School of Nursing looking at well-being and chronic disease and includes a number of proposal’s using the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) national database; one funded project specific addresses health during the post-reproductive transition.

Rachel Heath’s research focuses on the expansion of job opportunities in developing countries: how workers get access to these jobs and the consequences of these new opportunities for the lives of current and potential future workers. Since these jobs are often higher-paying and more reliable than jobs previously available to women in particular, they fundamentally change the value of work (relative to marriage and childbearing) and women’s bargaining power relative to their husbands and other family members.

Alexes Harris, Ph.D., is the Presidential Term Professor and Professor of Sociology at the University of Washington.  Dr. Harris’ work has spanned the criminal justice system, including juvenile justice, case processing outcomes, and monetary sanctions.  Her research is fundamentally centered on issues of inequality, poverty and race in the United States’ systems of justice. Her book, A Pound of Flesh: Monetary Sanctions as a Punishment for the Poor details the ways in which sentenced fines and fees often put an undue burden on disadvantaged populations and place them under even greater supervision of the criminal justice system. The book has received widespread media coverage, including by The New York Times, National Public Radio, The Nation, The New Yorker, and the Los Angeles Times.  Her research has been published in peer reviewed journals such as American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Ethnography, Crime and Public Policy, and Law and Society Review.  Her current project extends this line of research in eight states with funding from Arnold Ventures. 

Dr. Harris’ research areas include:

• Qualitative research methods
• Criminal justice system processing
• Multi-state multi-method data collection

Dr. Guttmannova is interested in the prevention of child and adolescent substance use and behavior problems, the risk and protective framework in the etiology of substance use, and the role of context including social policy, culture, immigration, and poverty in healthy development across the life course.

Mary Kay Gugerty is the Nancy Bell Evans Professor of Nonprofit Management and the Faculty Director of the Nancy Bell Evans Center on Nonprofits & Philanthropy at the Evans School of Public Policy & Governance, University of Washington. She is also the Principal Investigator for the International Program in Public Health Leadership.

Her research examines evaluation and impact measurement in the social sector; advocacy, accountability and voluntary regulation programs among nonprofit and NGOs; and community-based organizations and rural development in sub-Saharan Africa.

Gugerty’s recent book, The Goldilocks Challenge: Right-Sized Evaluation and Monitoring for Social Sector Organizations is co-authored with Dean Karlan and published by Oxford University Press. Gugerty is also the lead editor of Voluntary Regulation of Nonprofit and Nongovernmental Organizations: An Accountability Club Framework, published by Cambridge University Press in 2010 and co-edited with Aseem Prakash and co-editor of Advocacy Organizations and Collective Action, also with Aseem Prakash and published by Cambridge University Press.

Gugerty’s research also explores issues in rural development and community development institutions in Africa. Current work examines the impact of women’s participation in agricultural self-help groups on household decision-making and agricultural production.

James Gregory is a professor of History and the Harry Bridges Chair and Director of the Center for Labor Studies. His research examines issues of migration, race, radicalism, and labor in the United States. He is the author of numerous articles and essays and two prize winning books on internal migration: The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migration of Black and White Southerners Transformed America (2005) and American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California (1989).

Current projects include two studies of American radicalism: (1) Upton Sinclair, the EPIC Movement, and the Twilight of American Socialism that traces a critical turn in the organizational and electoral prospects of the American Left; (2) Red Seattle: Radical Generations from the Knights of Labor to the WTO that explores the challenges of continuity and socialization faced by the American left in the 20th century. Also ongoing is the Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project, an online public history project that explores the long history of segregation and civil rights activism in the Pacific Northwest.

Amelia Gavin’s primary research examines the etiological pathways to preterm birth and low birth weight from a life-course perspective. She also studies the social, structural, and cultural contexts associated with different health outcomes, especially among racial and ethnic groups. She has published in a wide range of journals including Psychological Medicine, General Hospital Psychiatry, Journal of Psychosomatic Research, American Journal of Public Health, Archives of General Psychiatry, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Prevention Science, Obstetrics & Gynecology, American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Journal of Women’s Health, and Public Health Reports. In 2005, Dr. Gavin received a five-year NIH clinical training grant award to fund the Depression and Anxiety in Pregnancy Study. The study is designed to address unanswered questions about the prevalence and course of perinatal depressive and panic disorders and the impact of antenatal major depression on pregnancy outcomes. To accomplish these research objectives, a quality improvement project was implemented at the Maternal and Infant Care Center (MICC) at the University of Washington Medical Center to screen women for major depressive disorder, panic disorder, and psychosocial stress during the perinatal period. The screening is conducted by clinic staff at three different times during the course of care – twice during pregnancy (16 weeks and 36 weeks) and at the 6-week postpartum appointment. To date, over 4,800 women have been screened for probable major depressive disorder and probable panic disorder through this study.

Karin Frey is a Research Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at the College of Education. Her research focuses on revenge, reconciliation, sociomoral identity and the development of caregiving in adolescence. She is the PI of a study that examines how African American, European American, Indigenous American and Mexican American youth learn about themselves when they avenge a victimized peer or take actions that resolve the situation. Contextual influences such as perceived cultural norms and institutional justice are examined as contributors to actions, thoughts and emotions. Complementary samples of European Americans from Alabama, Chinese Canadians and Pakistani Canadians are also being collected to assure representation from different types of honor, face, and dignity cultures.

Dr. Fredriksen-Goldsen’s primary area of scholarship focuses on the intersection of health disparities, aging and care giving in marginalized communities. Currently, as the Principal Investigator of the National Health, Aging and Sexuality Study: Caring and Aging with Pride over Time (R01), she is leading the first national longitudinal study on health disparities of LGBT midlife and older adults and their caregivers.