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Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology

Zewdie and Hajat Co-Author Publication on Residential Segregation and Air Pollution

Racial segregation is a fundamental cause of disease, but research on its relationship with air pollution beyond sociodemographic mechanisms remains underdeveloped. To address this gap, CSDE Trainee Hiwot Zewdie and Affiliate Anjum Hajat (Epidemiology) recently collaborated with several co-authors to publish a paper in Environmental Epidemiology entitled “Racial residential segregation is associated with ambient air pollution exposure after adjustment for multilevel sociodemographic factors: Evidence from eight US-based cohorts.” The findings suggest that segregation is independently associated with air pollution beyond SES factors, and may be a confounding variable that should be considered in future epidemiological studies on air pollution. Read the full article here.

Chi Awarded Presidential Early Career Award

Congratulations to CSDE Affiliate Donald Chi, who recently received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from outgoing US President Joe Biden. Dr. Chi has received wide recognition for his research, including the 2017 Young Investigator Award from the International Association for Dental Research. Dr. Chi was also previously a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University which helped inform his research program on the social and behavioral determinants of health inequities in children. 

Recently, Dr. Chi has led research examining why some parents reject the administration of fluoride to their children and has worked with Yup’ik communities in Alaska to help improve the oral health of Alaska Native children.

Check out the official list of the nearly 400 PECASE winners from 14 participating agencies and learn more about the award here.

Raftery and Ševčíková to Teach One-Day Short Course on Subnational Bayesian Population Projections at PAA 2025

Population projections have traditionally been done deterministically using the cohort component method, yielding a single value for each projected future population quantity of interest. At PAA 2025, CSDE Affiliate Adrian Raftery and Research Scientist Hana Ševčíková will teach a workshop on the theory and practice behind Bayesian subnational population projections, in which the total fertility rate, female and male life expectancy at birth, and net migration rates are projected using Bayesian hierarchical models estimated via Markov Chain Monte Carlo.

The instructors are members of the research group that developed the methods to be taught in the course. Learn more about this opportunity here.

DOJ Office on Violence Against Women Announces Research Grant Opportunity (LOIs due 2/7/25)

The Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) recently announced their Research and Evaluation (R&E) Initiative. The R&E Initiative is designed to study approaches to addressing and preventing domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence, and stalking, so that communities benefiting from OVW grant funds will be better equipped to align their work with practices that are known to be effective.
OVW’s R&E Initiative seeks proposals for evaluations of Violence Against Women Act (VAWA)-funded interventions and emerging innovations in diverse communities and in settings including law enforcement, prosecution, courts, victim services, community-based and culturally specific programs, healthcare, schools, faith communities, and more. The initiative supports researcher-practitioner partnerships and a broad range of rigorous research and evaluation methods, including qualitative, mixed-method, quasi-experimental, and experimental designs. Grants of up to $500,000 are available. View the full call for proposals here.
For FY 2025, OVW encourages R&E Initiative applicants to address one or more of the following topics, which are described in full in the Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO): evaluations of VAWA-funded interventions, evaluations of trainings, strategies, policies, practices, tools, and other means of fostering trauma-informed law enforcement and prosecutorial responses to sexual assault, domestic/dating violence, and stalking, research and evaluation on LGBT-specific services, outreach, training, education, and prevention, research and evaluation on ways of ensuring language access in responses to gender-based violence, evaluation of training curricula, tools, and other technical assistance (TA) resources developed and implemented with OVW grant funds, evaluations of emerging innovations, secondary data analyses related to domestic/dating violence, sexual assault, and/or stalking, research, evaluation, and data analysis related to domestic violence homicide prevention, and evaluations of restorative practices. This year’s R&E Initiative topic areas include a $5 million funding opportunity to evaluate Abby Honold Act-funded programs.