CSDE Affiliate India Ornelas (Health Systems and Population Health), CSDE External Affiliate Amy Bailey (Illinois), and CSDE External Affiliate Hedy Lee (Duke) recently co-authored an essay in the American Journal of Public Health that makes the case for building a powerful coalition to advance health equity through attention to power and overcoming structural constraints. Read more.

CSDE Trainee Natalie Turner and co-author Carli Friedman recently authored a study, titled “Examining Cross-State Differences in Self Directed Services Provided Through 1915(c) Waivers for Older Adults”, published in the Journal of Aging & Social Policy. Self-Direction is a service delivery model that allows older adults to select their services and who provides them. This mixed-method study identifies cross-state differences in how states are allowing Self-Direction among the 60 Medicaid Home and Community-Based Services (HCBS) 1915(c) waivers that serve older adults using Framework Analysis and descriptive statistics.

CSDE Affiliate Clara Berridge (Social Work) published a forum article in The Gerontologist with USCF’s Anita Ho, titled “Why AI Governance Should Be a Focal Issue for Gerontology”. Drawing on that work, Berridge spoke about the importance of protecting privacy for older adults and applying a sociotechnical perspective as a panelist for a National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine’s (NASEM) Hauser Policy Impact Fund Webinar series,

CSDE External Affiliate Salene Jones (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center) and co-authors recently published an article in Population Health Management. In breast cancer, clinicians add data on social support to patient electronic health records (EHRs) often in free text notes, but those data may be challenging to use for population health initiatives or research purposes. Jones and co-authors evaluated different methods of creating the total score for EHR-Support forming the basis for a tool that can be used in population health research and management.

CSDE Affiliate Edmund Seto (Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences) and co-authors recently published an article in the Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health, titled, “Accessibility To Ethnic Food Stores Authorized by the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) in Washington State.” Lead author and recent UW MPH graduate, Kana Ogaki and her advisor Dr. Pia Chaparro, who is Assistant Professor in Health Systems and Population Health assessed the availability and distribution of WIC-authorized ethnic stores in WA,

Announcing CSDE’s Autumn 2025 Lightning Talks and Poster Session! CSDE I am Mingze Li, a CSDE Trainee and doctoral student at the Department of Sociology. This year, I am the organizer of the CSDE’s Autumn 2025 Lightning Talks and Poster Session. Applications are currently open for graduate students to present their research and receive feedback at this event, and we would love to receive your submission! This is an excellent, low-stakes opportunity to practice your presentation skills,

The Population Research Center at Portland State University, directed by CSDE External Affiliate Ethan Sharygin (Portland State University), has published a resource guide for finding federal data during the shutdown. These sources include Census Reporter, Esri, PolicyMap, IPUMS, NHGIS, and the Data Rescue Project Portal.

CSDE Trainee Zoe H. Pleasure (Health Services) and CSDE External Affiliate Laura Lindberg (Rutgers) have been awarded research funding from the Society of Family Planning to study contraception misinformation. Pleasure and Lindberg will explore how contraceptive misinformation affects contraceptive health outcomes for gender-diverse young people in the U.S. through a nationally representative survey and qualitative interviews. This project builds on a seed grant funded through CSDE. Pleasure also received funding for a second project,

CSDE Affiliate Ann Bostrom and an international, interdisciplinary team of co-authors recently published “Scientists’ mental models of microplastics: insights into expert perceptions from an exploratory comparison of research methods” in the journal, Microplastics and Nanoplastics. The article presents results from two complementary studies of the causal beliefs—that is, the “mental models”—microplastic scientists hold related to the risks of microplastics in freshwater systems, an emerging global environmental problem. Study 1 examined core concepts in their mental models from a decision analysis perspective.

CSDE External Affiliate Joshua Tom (Seattle Pacific) and co-authors recently published an article titled, “Religion and Racial Bias in Artificial Intelligence Large Language Models” in Socius. Tom and co-authors examine if LLMs hold implicit assumptions with regard to religious identities by prompting LLMs to generate religious sermons, specifying different combinations of race and religious tradition of the clergyperson. Evangelical Protestant pastors had easier to read AI–generated sermons,