CSDE Affiliate Vedavati Patwardhan (EPAR) and co-authors recently published an article in Studies in Family Planning, examining the relationship between Indian women’s contact with a community health worker (CHW) and discussion of family planning (FP) with their contraceptive use. Drawing on data from over 306,000 women in India’s 2019–2021 National Family Health Survey, the authors found that traditional contraception use is high, particularly among married nonpregnant, non-sterilized women ages 15–49 years,

CSDE External Affiliate Holly Hummer (University of British Columbia) recently published an article in Social Forces comparing how women in the United States and Japan experience and evaluate childlessness. Drawing on 157 interviews with non-mothers across the two countries, Hummer finds that Japanese women were more likely to frame childlessness as increasingly normalized and attributable to entrenched gender inequalities, while American women more often described it as socially isolating and publicly contested,

CSDE Affiliate Annie T. Chen (Biomedical Informatics and Medical Education), recently worked with lead author Lauren R. Pollack, PI Rashmi K. Sharma, and co-authors, to publish a retrospective cohort study in the Journal of General Internal Medicine that compared end-of-life care characteristics among people with dementia and a preferred language other than English (PLOE) versus people with dementia preferring English. Among nearly 7,800 decedents from 2011–2021, Decedents with dementia and PLOE were more likely to have documented goals-of-care discussions and similarly likely to have ACP documents and palliative care consultation,

CSDE External Affiliate Jennifer Hook (University of Southern California) contributed a chapter titled “Comparative Evidence on Policies Promoting Gender Equality in Domestic Labor” to The Routledge International Handbook of Time Use Themes and Applications. Drawing on cross-national time use data from European and Anglophone countries, the chapter reviews how work-family policies — including parental leave and early childhood education and care (ECEC) — shape both the time couples spend on housework and childcare and the relative division of that labor in heterosexual couples.

CSDE is a member of the Association of Population Centers (APC). Each year the APC publishes a resource guide about all member centers. You might check it out and see what is happening elsewhere!

CSDE Affiliate Theresa Rocha Beardall (Sociology) has been named one of seven early career researchers in the newest class of William T. Grant Scholars. In 2025, the Puyallup Tribe signed a memorandum of understanding with thirteen public school districts to guide curriculum development on tribal culture and history, as part of Washington State’s mandated Since Time Immemorial curriculum. Alongside this MOU, the Puyallup Tribal Historic Preservation Department (THPD) is recovering Puyallup children’s boarding school records held by outside institutions for over a century to reclaim tribal authority over their educational narrative.

The UW Population Health Initiative recently awarded CSDE Affiliate Michelle Shin (Child, Family, and Population Health Nursing) a Tier 2 pilot research grant to partner with a community health center and community-based organizations to increase vaccine uptake among children in East African communities in Washington State. East African communities, including Somali, Eritrean, and Ethiopian communities, face disproportionately high risk due to low rates of measles, mumps, rubella and varicella (MMRV) vaccination driven by misinformation and systemic barriers.

CSDE Affiliate Isabelle Cohen (Public Policy) published “A Big-Push Community Intervention Reduced Rates of Child Marriage by 80%” in Nature. Cohen and co-authors used a paired cluster-randomized trial in 18 communities to evaluate a locally tailored intervention to reduce child marriage in northern Nigeria. The study shows that the intervention decreased rates of marriage among adolescent girls from 86% in the control group to only 21% in the treatment group,

CSDE Affiliate David Swanson (UC Riverside) has been recognized with the Alumni Distinguished Service Award by The Foundation for Western Washington University (WWU) & Alumni. These awardees were chosen from a community-wide nomination process and selected by the board. The Foundation for WWU & Alumni highlighted Swanson’s contributions as an internationally recognized demographer, prolific researcher, and higher education advocate. You can read more about Swanson’s accomplishments here. The Foundation also invites you to join the Alumni Awards ceremony on May 15.

Smithsonian Magazine quoted CSDE Affiliate Greg Bratman (Environmental and Forest Sciences) in a feature on how climate change, pollution, and extinction are altering the planet’s olfactory landscapes. Bratman noted that the invisible olfactory environments in which humans are embedded are often overlooked. The Smithsonian feature tapped into the theme of a 2025 Harvard Radcliffe Institute Working Group, co-organized by Bratman, Lucia Jacobs, and Asifa Majid.