Read the new issue here!
*New* NIH designates people with disabilities as population with health disparities
Eliseo J. Pérez-Stable, M.D., director of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD), designated people with disabilities as a population with health disparities for research supported by the National Institutes of Health. The decision was made in consultation with Robert Otto Valdez, Ph.D., the director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, after careful consideration of a report delivered by an NIMHD advisory council, input from the disability community and a review of the science and evidence. A report issued in December 2022 by the Advisory Committee to the (NIH) Director (ACD), informed by the work of the Subgroup on Individuals with Disabilities, explored similar issues faced by people with disabilities. The designation is one of several steps NIH is taking to address health disparities faced by people with disabilities and ensure their representation in NIH research.
CSDE Autumn 2023 Lightning Talk & Poster Session
Please join us and the Population Health Initiative for short talks and a poster session featuring research from CSDE Trainees and students. The poster session will take place in-person in Green A of the Research Commons in Allen Library South from 12:30-1:30 PM on Friday, Dec 8th. This year’s event features the work of several CSDE Trainees and students:
- Hugo Aguas (PhD student, Sociology): Housing Precariousness Relationships to Household Composition Amongst Hispanic Renters 2020-2023
- Breon Haskett (PhD student, Sociology): Nowhere Bound: Industrial Pull Factors in the US
- Julie Kim (PhD student, Health Metrics): Global Improvements in the Representation of Women in Science Have Stalled
- Bocheng Zhang (PhD student, Economics): Language Assimilation as a Determinant of School Attendance for Immigrant Children
*New* UW Data Seminar: Phuong to Discuss Population Health Research & Research Data Sharing (12/5/23)
Join UW Data Science on Tuesday, December 5th for their final UW Data Science Seminar of 2023 with Jimmy Phuong, MSPH, PhD, who is Acting Assistant Professor of UW Biomedical and Health Informatics. The seminar will be held in person in the UW Physics/Astronomy Auditorium A102 from 4:30 to 5:20 p.m. Pacific. Learn more about Dr. Phuong’s seminar here.
“Population health research & research data sharing in national research consortia”
Abstract: Health systems are uniquely positioned to survey the health of their patient population, including the effects of natural hazards, disaster disruptions, and public health emergencies. Health systems are an integral part of biomedical research consortia, where data sharing supports data-driven research and iterative quality improvements to the data from each health system. Apart from clinical outcomes, health systems are gradually increasing their focus upon collecting and addressing gaps in understanding Social Determinants of Health (or Social Drivers of Health, SDoH) and their dynamic role in maintaining health and wellness. This includes integrating patient-level information as well as place-based information integrated from geocoding and secondary use of spatial-temporal datasets. In this talk, I will discuss the nexus of environmental health, disaster management and population health research, and biomedical informatics research. I will also discuss the directions from health system preparedness, the broader implications towards research data sharing and research consortia with a precision medicine focus, and the analytical capacities needed for research with multiple data types in cloud infrastructure.
*New* Wittgenstein Centre Conference Registration Open for Virtual Participation (12/6-12/7/23)
This year’s Wittgenstein Centre Conference on “Exploring Population Heterogeneities” will take place December 6-7 in a hybrid format. The registration for online participation is still available. The keynote speakers are Ridhi Kashyap, University of Oxford, Anna Matysiak, University of Warsaw and Iñaki Permanyer, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Find the detailed agenda. Register for online participation.
Understanding and analyzing population heterogeneity and its drivers have long been at the heart of demographic analysis. For instance, while inequalities in health and life expectancy across socio-economic groups have been studied since long, their increase over the past decade has turned into a growing concern. In addition to “classical” markers of heterogeneity in individual behavior, such as sex/gender, age, education, urban-rural residence and socio-economic status, there are other important sources of demographic heterogeneity such as spatial, generational, environmental, etc. Their analysis is essential for modeling population developments and projecting them into the future. Equally important is to understand how these heterogeneities arise and evolve, how they are driving and driven by socioeconomic inequality, and the policy challenges they impose for socio-economic development, welfare systems and social cohesion.
Cellular aging is the Focus of New Research by Promislow and Colleagues
CSDE Affiliate Dr. Daniel Promislow and colleagues released their research in Genome Research, “Cellular age explains variation in age-related cell-to-cell transcriptome variability“. Organs and tissues age at different rates within a single individual. Such asynchrony in aging has been widely observed at multiple levels, from functional hallmarks, such as anatomical structures and physiological processes, to molecular endophenotypes, such as the transcriptome and metabolome. However, we lack a conceptual framework to understand why some components age faster than others. Just as demographic models explain why aging evolves, here authors test the hypothesis that demographic differences among cell types, determined by cell-specific differences in turnover rate, can explain why the transcriptome shows signs of aging in some cell types but not others.
Through analysis of mouse single-cell transcriptome data across diverse tissues and ages, they find that cellular age explains a large proportion of the variation in the age-related increase in transcriptome variance. They further show that long-lived cells are characterized by relatively high expression of genes associated with proteostasis and that the transcriptome of long-lived cells shows greater evolutionary constraint than short-lived cells. In contrast, in short-lived cell types, the transcriptome is enriched for genes associated with DNA repair. Based on these observations, they develop a novel heuristic model that explains how and why aging rates differ among cell types.
Teaching war as a threat to public health: Hagopian and Kanter Discuss the UW Experience
CSDE Affiliate Dr. Amy Hagopian (Health Services and Global Health) and Dr. Evan Kanter authored an article in Medicine, Conflict, and Survival, titled “Teaching war as a threat to public health: the University of Washington experience“. Although war generates significant health harms directly and indirectly, and across generations, it is little studied in schools of public health as a preventable threat to health. The American Public Health Association and the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health, among other professional organizations, have noted this gap and called for more attention to this determinant of health. Authors describe the University of Washington experience launching a well-subscribed and highly-rated 4-credit course in War & Health, designed to be taught simultaneously to undergraduate and graduate students from across the health sciences disciplines and for students in other arts and sciences tracks as well.
IPUMS Global Health Data Analyst
Guttmannova Examines High-risk Alcohol and Cannabis Use Amongst Young Adults
CSDE Affiliate Dr. Katarina Guttmannova (Psychiatry and Behavioral Science) and co-authors published their research in Addictive Behaviors, titled “Age-related patterns in high-risk alcohol and cannabis use and their associations with positive and negative affect in young adulthood“. Authors examined age-varying associations between young adult simultaneous alcohol and marijuana/cannabis use (SAM) and heavy episodic drinking (HED) and positive and negative affect to inform harm reduction efforts.
Young adults reporting past-year alcohol use (n = 556; ages 19–25) were recruited in a state where alcohol and nonmedical cannabis use was legal for those 21 +. Participants provided 24 repeated monthly assessments. Among those reporting past-month cannabis use on at least one survey, logistic time-varying effect models estimated (1) the age-varying prevalence of and associations between past-month SAM and HED and (2) age-varying unique associations of affect with SAM and HED.
There was a positive age-varying association between HED and SAM over time that was highest at age 19 (OR = 7.56), decreased until age 20.7 (OR = 3.39), increased until age 23.0 (OR = 4.85), and decreased until the association became non-significant by age 25. Negative affect was positively associated with SAM from ages 20.7 to 23.0, peaking at age 21.8 (OR = 1.36). Positive affect was positively associated with HED from ages 19.4 to 20.4 (peak OR = 1.25) and ages 22.5 to 24.5 (peak OR = 1.38). In contrast, positive affect was not uniquely associated with SAM nor negative affect with HED across ages 19–25.
While HED and SAM were positively associated throughout young adulthood and interventions could target them in tandem, their associations with affect suggest differential etiologic processes. Preventive intervention and harm reduction efforts should attend to psychological context in which these behaviors occur.