CSDE Affiliates Laura Dwyer-Lindgren (Health Metrics Sciences, Global Health) and Ali H. Mokdad (Health Metrics Sciences, Epidemiology) released an article in The Lancet Public Health, titled “Burden of liver cancer mortality by county, race, and ethnicity in the USA, 2000–19: a systematic analysis of health disparities“. Understanding how specific populations are affected by liver cancer is important for identifying priorities, policies, and interventions to mitigate health risks and reduce disparities. This study aims to provide comprehensive analysis of rates and trends in liver cancer mortality for different racial and ethnic populations in the USA nationally and at the county level from 2000 to 2019.

CSDE Affiliate Isabelle Cohen (Public Policy & Governance) authored a new study in The World Bank Economic Review, titled “Documenting Decentralization: Empirical Evidence on Administrative Unit Proliferation from Uganda“. Decentralization is an important and commonplace type of reform, yet our understanding of its effects remains limited. This paper documents the effects of the 2009–10 wave of district creation in Uganda, which increased the country’s districts by 42 percent, using rich data on subdistrict units to assess the effects of district creation on a broad range of post-decentralization outcomes in a difference-in-differences framework.

CSDE Affiliate Stipica Mudrazija (Health Systems and Population Health) authored new research with colleagues in the Journal of Aging and Health, titled “Preclinical Dementia and Economic Well-Being Trajectories of Racially Diverse Older Adults“. This study examined the magnitude, changes, and racial/ethnic disparities in the economic costs of the 16-year preclinical phase of dementia—a period of cognitive decline without significant impact on daily activities. The study utilized two dementia algorithms to classify individuals with incident dementia in the Health and Retirement Study. These cases were compared to matched controls in terms of poverty status, labor force participation, and unsecured debts. Older adults classified with dementia were more likely to drop out of the labor force and become poor than similar older adults without dementia. Racial/ethnic disparities in poverty persisted during the preclinical period, with non-Hispanic Black older adults more likely to leave the labor force and Hispanic older adults more likely to have unsecured debt. Findings highlight the economic costs during prodromal phase of dementia, emphasizing need for early interventions to reduce financial strain across diverse older adults.

CSDE Affiliate Joan A. Casey (Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences) co-authored new research in the Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology, titled “Accuracy of self-reported distance to nearest unconventional oil and gas well in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia residents and implications for exposure assessment“. The study was lead-authored by Cassandra J. Clark, a postdoctoral fellow at Yale. Self-reported distances to industrial sources have been used in epidemiology as proxies for exposure to environmental hazards and indicators of awareness and perception of sources. Unconventional oil and gas development (UOG) emits pollutants and has been associated with adverse health outcomes. We compared self-reported distance to the nearest UOG well to the geographic information system-calculated distance for 303 Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia residents using Cohen’s Weighted Kappa. Understanding differences between objective and subjective measures of UOG proximity could inform studies of perceived exposures or risks and may also be relevant to adverse health effects.

CSDE Affiliate David Swanson (Sociology, UC Riverside) co-authored new research in Social Science Quarterly, titled “The decline of the non-Hispanic white population in the United States of America“. The question of a declining non-Hispanic white (NHW) population has sparked debate in the United States. In examining this question, three bodies of research have emerged. One group reports that the decline is real, a second argues that it is an illusion, and the third provides evidence that the decline is concentrated within socio-economic segments of the NHW population. Authors use the third groups’ insight as the starting point for their research objective.

CSDE Trainee Natalie Vaughan-Wynn (Geography) and CSDE Affiliate Jin-Kyu Jung (Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences) published an article in Environment and Planning F, titled “Digital food apartheid: The uneven food geographies of Seattle in the era of Amazon“. This article puts forward the concept of “digital food apartheid” to articulate differentiation in terms of one’s agency concerning their food that is mediated by, reified through, or materialized from data or digital infrastructure given the omnipresence of racial capitalism. They examine the digitization of public food assistance in the United States in conversation with Black digital geographies, food geographies, and critical GIS, paying particular attention to the US Department of Agriculture’s COVID-19-era Online Grocery Purchase Program (OPP), which gives Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants access to online grocery shopping and delivery.