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Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology

Zamora-Kapoor is awarded the AIM-AHEAD Fellowship Program in Leadership!

CSDE Affiliate Dr. Anna Zamora-Kapoor (Sociology and Department of Medical Education and Clinical Sciences at Washington State) has received the AIM-AHEAD Fellowship Program in Leadership, to master new skills in artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve health equity. Dr. Zamora-Kapoor plans to use this opportunity to partner with Hispanic-serving clinics and understand their attitudes towards artificial intelligence and machine learning. This first step is critical to develop future studies that can leverage the strengths of artificial intelligence and machine learning in clinical settings and improve health outcomes among Hispanics in Washington state.

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Blakeney Leads Study on an Approach to Improve Communication in Inpatient Hospital Settings

CSDE Affiliate Erin Blakeney (UW School of Nursing, UW Institute of Translational Health Sciences) led a study with co-authors, published in Frontiers in Medicine titled “How and why might interprofessional patient- and family-centered rounds improve outcomes among healthcare teams and hospitalized patients? A conceptual framework informed by scoping and narrative literature review methods“. Poor communication within healthcare contributes to inefficiencies, medical errors, conflict, and other adverse outcomes. A promising model to improve outcomes resulting from poor communication in the inpatient hospital setting is Interprofessional Patient- and Family-Centered rounds (IPFCR). IPFCR brings two or more health professions together with hospitalized patients and families as part of a consistent, team-based routine to share information and collaboratively arrive at a daily plan of care. A growing body of literature focuses on implementation and outcomes of IPFCR to improve healthcare quality and team and patient outcomes. Most studies report positive changes following IPFCR implementation. However, conceptual frameworks and theoretical models are lacking in the IPFCR literature and represent a major gap that needs to be addressed to move this field forward. The purpose of this two-part review is to propose a conceptual framework of how IPFCR works. The goal is to articulate a framework that can be tested in subsequent research studies. Published IPFCR literature and relevant theories and frameworks were examined and synthesized to explore how IPFCR works, to situate IPFCR in relation to existing models and frameworks, and to postulate core components and underlying causal mechanisms. A preliminary, context-specific, conceptual framework is proposed illustrating interrelationships between four core components of IPFCR (interprofessional approach, intentional patient and family engagement, rounding structure, shared development of a daily care plan), improvements in communication, and better outcomes.

Intimate Partner Violence and Chronic Disease is the Subject of New Research by Barnabas and Co-authors

CSDE Affiliate Ruanne Barnabas (Epidemiology) and co-authors recently published their work in Personal Relationships, titled “Development and empirical test of the research-informed South African Relationship Functioning Assessment (SARFA)“. Intimate partners play an important role in chronic diseases. Despite the chronic disease burden in sub-Saharan Africa, very few culturally relevant quantitative measures of intimate relationship functioning are available. Authors conducted an empirical investigation evaluating the psychometric properties of the South African Relationship Functioning Assessment (SARFA) assessing healthy relationship functioning in N = 150 community members (50% women; M age = 27.2 years) living in the Vulindlela area of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Item development was based on prior qualitative research from two South African communities. All assessments were conducted in isiZulu, participants’ primary language. An exploratory factor analysis was conducted on the initial 39-item measure. The best-fitting model consisted of one factor with 22 items. The SARFA’s internal consistency was α = .94. Convergent validity was observed via significant positive associations (all rs ≥ .38, p < .001) between the SARFA’s total score and measures of trust, emotional intimacy, constructive communication, sexual satisfaction, and relationship control (women only). Divergent validity was observed for women only. Encouraging initial psychometric properties of a culturally relevant measure of relationship functioning in KwaZulu-Natal may have relevance to other communities and potential to be used in research involving couples and health in chronic disease-burdened communities.

*New* CSDE Computational Demography Working Group Hosts Berk Can Deniz on Experimentation and Subscriber Growth (10/25/23)

On October 25 from 3:30-4:30pm Berk Can Deniz, a Data Scientist with Figma, will join CDWG to discuss his transition to the tech industry and demonstrate a recent project using online experiments. Berk Can Deniz is currently employed as a monetization and growth data scientist at Figma, where he primarily focuses on experimentation and subscriber growth. Before joining Figma, he held a position at Duolingo, where he led several monetization projects for their language learning application. Berk obtained his Ph.D. from Stanford University, where his research centered on how organizations used online experiments to develop digital products. This event will be on Zoom (register here).

New Chapter by Way: Garden Design as Feminist Ground

CSDE Affiliate Thaïsa Way (Landscape Architecture) published a chapter, “Garden Design as Feminist Ground” in an edited collection, titled Women and the Collaborative Art of Gardens. Way’s chapter explores the garden as a place of creative and transformational practice for women in the early twentieth century in the United States. Focused on constellations of White women and Black women, the chapter discusses how the garden served women in both similar and distinct ways. For White women, the garden would serve as a portal to the profession of landscape architecture while for Black women the garden performed equally as a place of individual creativity and as a communal space. In both narratives, the role of collective action and cooperative practice are integral and suggest a more nuanced history of the history of gardens in the making of the American landscape.