CSDE Affiliate Khai Hoan Tram (Infectious Disease, UW Medicine) recently won the UW/Fred Hutch Center for AIDS Research’s 2024 CFAR New Investigator Award! The purpose of this award is to encourage early-stage investigators (at a senior stage of training or recently independent) to conduct independent  research, acquire preliminary data to use for subsequent grant submissions, publish, receive mentorship, and write one or more grants to obtain funding to continue their HIV research careers. Dr. Tram’s research uses the tools of epidemiology, geospatial analysis, and infectious diseases modeling to inform data-driven, precision public health interventions against the TB and HIV epidemics. Over the past few years, Dr. Tram’s research program has centered on studying the relationship between human mobility and infectious disease transmission. The collaboration leading to Dr. Tram’s CFAR award initially started with a CSDE Population Research Planning Grant that funded a research planning trip to South Africa in 2023. Congratulations on receiving this award Dr. Tram and we look forward to learning more about your research! 

Around 11% of US children are diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). A previous study from CSDE Affiliate Dan Eisenberg (Anthropology) showed that the ADHD-associated 7R allele of the gene encoding the D(4) dopamine receptor (DRD4) had a positive effect on the nutritional status of nomadic adult Ariaal men and a negative effect on settled adult men. This suggests that those with ADHD might have environmentally contingent benefits which are more apparent in nomadic contexts. In a pre-registered paper recently published in the American Journal of Human Biology, joint first authors Amanda Kunkle (PhD Candidate, Anthropology) and CSDE alumnus Robert Tennyson along with CSDE Affiliates Dan Eisenberg (Anthropology) and Bettina Shell-Duncan (Anthropology), and CSDE alumna Katherine Wander (Binghamton University) were unable to replicate this previous finding in a sample of children from a closely related population, the Rendille, but found a positive association between DRD4 7R and household economic status. Read the full story here.

With a critical mass of new affiliates working in the area of modeling transmission dynamics of infectious diseases — CSDE decided to form a new working group! An initial meet-and-greet and planning meeting was held in mid-March, with ten folks in attendance. Now, we’re ready to announce our regular meetings: every fourth Tuesday (summer included!), 3:30 – 5:00 pm, in HRC (Hans Rosling Center (HRC), a.k.a the Pop Health Building). We are hoping for Room 101 for the long term, but will need to be flexible for the first few meetings. Zoom will also be available, but in-person is always preferred!  Each month we’ll have someone present their research, past, present or future, with a focus on both the substance and the methods, so we can all learn from one another, provide thoughtful feedback, and make new connections and collaborations. Steve Goodreau and Abie Flaxman will be co-leading for the start.

For more information about each talk, and other relevant events, please join our mailing list here. Feel free to invite students, post-docs, advisers, etc. Note that for those with more of an interest in within-host pathogen modeling, the Hutch’s Mathematical Modeling Affinity Group may also be of interest.

The clock-drawing test is a common tool for assessing cognitive function, that offers an entry point for considering how time itself is experienced in the context of dementia care. In a recent article published in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute entitled “The clock-drawing test: reading temporalities of dementia from clinical chart notes,” CSDE External Affiliate Janelle Taylor (University of Toronto) explores how clinical interactions reflect broader social and historical forces shaping time, from cultural expectations of aging to shifts in labor and medicine. The article draws on analysis of medical records of three older adults in Seattle who developed dementia without close family. It considers how dementia reshapes our understanding of time, and how memory and temporality alike are deeply social and embodied. Read the full article here.