Archives: Affiliates

Eric Roth’s research has focused on the social epidemiology of HIV/AIDS, with research in Kenya and Canada exploring the interactions between cultural patterns and disease transmission. He is the author of the text, Culture, Biology and Anthropological Demography (Cambridge, 2004), and the co-editor with Elliot Fratkin (Smith College) of the book As Pastoralists Settle: Cultural, Health and Economic Consequences of Pastoral Sedentarization in Marsabit District, Kenya (Springer-Verlag, 2006). He has published in diverse peer-reviewed journals including American Anthropologist, Human Organization, Human Ecology, Culture, Health and Sexuality, International Journal of Drug Policy, Harm Reduction Journal, Drug and Alcohol Review, Sexual Research and Social Policy, Evolution and Human Behaviour and Health, Risk and Society. One current project includes a NIH-funded Center Grant (R24) linking the University of Washington, the University of Nairobi, and the University of Victoria in social epidemiology of female sex workers and their clients in the large informal settlement, or slum, called Kibera in Nairobi, Kenya. Another, funded by NIH and the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR), focuses on the sexual behavior of Men Who Have Sex with Men in Vancouver, British Columbia in light of the provincial expansion of HAART. A third, funded by CIHR, will examine health consequences for HIV+ women across Canada.

Mikael Jansson’s research is focused on the health of vulnerable populations as well as on research ethics and research methods. He applies his demographic training primarily to understand life transitions of street-involved youth and low prestige service workers in Canada, the United States and Kenya. In the five years he has published four books and 10 referred articles in journals including the Canadian Medical Association Journal, Addiction, Sexuality Research and Social Policy, International Journal of Injury Control and Safety Promotion, Qualitative Health Research, Harm Reduction Journal, International Journal of Behavioral Development, Journal of Mental Health, Journal of Youth and Adolescence, and the Journal of Adolescence. In the last five years, he has received external funding from the NIH, the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). These grants are funding three large current projects that are involved with data collection in Kenya, Victoria BC and in six sites across Canada. He just completed the data collection on a two site, four wave panel sample in Victoria, BC Canada, and Sacramento California.

Merwan Engineer’s research over the past decade has been in the areas of demographic methods and models, development economics, and social well being. His work on demographic methods involves understanding the demographics of age-group societies, societies identified in the anthropology literature as organizing themselves according to age groups. His paper “Overlapping Generations Models of Graded Age-Set Societies” (The Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics) proves the equivalency between classes of models across the disciplines.

In other modeling work, “Choosing Longevity with Overlapping Generations” (The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics) examines health and savings decisions and shows that an economy can stagnate in a “poverty trap”. In a poverty trap individuals are poor and short lived. However, if the economy starts with enough wealth, it can “take off” and future generations will eventually become wealthy and long lived. This paper reveals when the initial level of wealth matters for intergenerational health and longevity outcomes.

In work on social well being, Engineer has developed improved indices of human development. In particular, he has developed a methodological analysis of the well-known Human Development Index. He has also modified the index to take into account the quality of life. This work is published in Social Indicators Research and Indian Growth and Development Review.

Laura Cowen’s research involves the theory and applications of capture-recapture studies. It encompasses applied statistics, bayesian methods and applications, conservation ecology, ecological modeling, fisheries modelling, modeling, and statistical ecology.

Capture-recapture is interdisciplinary by nature as it is primarily used in biology and fishery studies, however it also has applications in epidemiology. She also collaborates with other scientists (ecologists, fisheries scientists, and astrophysicists) in general to work on various scientific studies.

Recently, Cowen has become the Principal Investigator for two COVID-19 research grants. One study assesses the risks of future COVID-19 outbreaks in British Columbia using mathematical and statistical modelling. The other study focuses on estimating the number of hidden COVID-19 cases.  Cowen is also Principal Investigator on a Collaborative Research Team grant funded by CANSSI looking to develop statistical methods that will integrate population data from multiple sources.

Tom Burch is Adjunct Professor of Sociology at the University of Victoria, with research interests in family and household demography, demographic modelling, and fertility theory. Since the early 1990s, he has been working on the relations among theory, models, and data in empirical social science, particularly demography. His interest began with the realization that computer modeling of various kinds could provide the language with which to state sociological theories in a more rigorous and usable form. His work has led to a reconceptualization of demography, in which a large part of formal demography can be viewed as theoretical, and in which many behavioral theories, often discarded as too simplistic or inconsistent with some bodies of empirical data, are rescued as perfectly sound theory. This distinction rests on abandonment of the idea (from logical positivism) that theories are true or false, and adoption of the view that a theory or model is judged to fit some portion of the real world well enough in certain respects for a specific purpose. Work on these themes also has led to publications on the teaching of demography. Prior to 1990, most of his research was in the area of household and family demography–marriage, cohabitation, divorce; household structure and dynamics; kinship.

Elizabeth (Liz) Mogford is a Professor in the Department of Sociology at Western Washington University and an Affiliate Professor in the Department of Global Health at the University of Washington. Her teaching and research are interdisciplinary, combining sociology and public health. Her research interests include the social determinants of health, critical health literacy, and critical global learning. She is a leader in WWU’s faculty led Global Learning Programs. She was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Cameroon from 1994-1997, where she focused on public health and gender in development, and has conducted research in India, Mexico, and Kenya. In addition to teaching and research, Liz works on advocacy and outreach for advancing global health equity. Currently this includes being a board member of Health Alliance International and the Institute for Village Studies, and an advisory board member of Just Health Action and the Western Regional Global Health Conference.

Mick Cunningham is Professor of Sociology at Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA. He has been at Western Washington University since 1999, and an affiliate of the University of Washington’s Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology (CSDE) since 2002.

Cunningham’s research examines the long-term influences of parents on children, the consequences of divorce, the factors shaping individuals’ attitudes about family life, and the changing roles and responsibilities of women and men in families. His research linking parental characteristics to young adult outcomes including family attitudes and well-being continues to be regularly cited in the field. In addition, he has made important contributions to the literature on the work-family nexus through his longitudinal research investigating reciprocal relationships between women’s paid and unpaid work over the life course. He has also examined changing attitudes about family and gender in a European context, with a particular focus on Northern Ireland. Cunningham has recently embarked on study of intimate partner violence with Dr. Kristin Anderson and Dr. Julie Morris of Western Washington University. They are analyzing data from the recently-released National Intimate Partner Violence and Sexual Assault survey. (Note that these data are highly protected and are not housed on CSDE servers.) This research project will investigate the association between union status and experiences of intimate partner violence, and gender differences in violence exposure over the life course. Each of these projects is rooted in understanding important changes in family life in the U.S. and other countries that can be directly linked to well-being.

Hyoshin Kim is a quantitative, multidisciplinary health researcher with over 20 years of experience developing and conducting research projects in the field of public health for bio-behavioral, clinical, and population-policy applications. Trained as an economist with an emphasis on quantitative data modeling and statistical analysis, she has conducted research on health and social behaviors, and on policy analysis. Her past work includes: examining policy/program effects on individuals’ health behavior; developing healthcare quality indicators and measures based on healthcare data; investigating the relationship between drug use and entrance/exit of the federal welfare program among low income women; examining the role of race/ethnicity and socioeconomic factors on healthcare utilization for chronic diseases; examining the race gap in children’s test scores due to testing conditions at home and to interviewers’ characteristics in national survey data; estimating intervention effects of social-psychological programs; and investigating e-cigarette use behaviors and their related measurement issues. Her work involves multivariate analytical techniques and econometric modeling of large national data sets such as the NLSY, Add Health, and MEPS. For the past decade, she has been a key member of the Tobacco Centers of Regulatory Science (TCORS NIH/FDA grant) leading studies as Principal Investigator/Co-Investigator and Lead Statistician on tobacco use behavior to inform tobacco regulatory science. As Co-Director of TCORS Data Management and Statistics Core for the University of Maryland/Battelle, she led Statistics Core coordinating and providing expertise on research design, measurement, database, and statistical analysis. Currently, she is assessing the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid’s Bundled Payments for Care Improvement initiatives using Medicare claims data to estimate program effects on outcomes such as healthcare costs and readmission rates. She is also examining how built and social environments influence childhood obesity and racial/ethnic disparities using the Healthy Communities Study’s expanded database of diverse measures. She holds a PhD in Policy Analysis and Management from Cornell University.

Gavin W. Hougham, PhD, is currently Director of Development at the Fisher Center for Alzheimer’s Research Foundation.  Dr. Hougham, a sociologist, brings over three decades of work experience across academic, industry, non-profit, and government sectors. He was formerly faculty at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Medicine, where his research often borrowed advanced data analysis tools from other disciplines (genomics, computer science). While at UChicago, as Deputy Director of the Center for Health and the Social Sciences, he taught and ran undergraduate, graduate, and professional training programs in medical sociology, health policy, and health outcomes research.

Dr. Hougham has published and worked on a variety of health and medicine-focused topics, including geriatrics and various aspects of Alzheimer’s disease; using hospital electronic health record data to analyze sequences and recovery trajectories of communicable disease; the potential of AI to improve the health of older adults; preparing the healthcare workforce for an aging society.

Prior to joining the Fisher Center Foundation, he has held appointments at New York Medical College (Valhalla); Battelle Memorial Institute (Seattle); the John A. Hartford Foundation (NYC); and Wisconsin’s Division of Public Health (Milwaukee).

Dr. Hougham graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from SUNY, Brockport, earned Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from the University of Chicago, and was awarded a National Science Foundation Fellowship at the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology.  He also serves on the Boards of Directors of the Hospice of Westchester and Hudson Valley Stream Conservancy.  When time allows, he can be found making furniture in his basement shop for his family, visiting museums, or learning something new.

Dr. Greek has more than 25 years of experience in the design, conduct, and analysis of health-related research. Her work includes research in health outcomes, cancer prevention, cancer surveillance, demography, health related behaviors, health service use and health disparities based on race/ethnicity, language, nativity, and socioeconomic status.

Recently she has led three CDC contracts to conduct research on cancer surveillance and understanding cancer prevention and risk factors.

• Cancer Incidence Study of Marines/Navy Personnel and Civilian Employees Exposed to Contaminated Drinking Water at USMC Base Camp Lejeune (CIS). The CIS is an ongoing retrospective cohort study to evaluate the impact of exposure to toxic chemicals in the drinking water at U.S. Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, NC, to an unexposed comparison cohort from Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, CA. From the 1950s through the mid-1980s, drinking water at Camp Lejeune was contaminated with volatile organic compounds (VOCs). The CIS uses Personally Identifiable Information (PII) for 536,601 cohort members to conduct data linkages and collect the following information: (a) addresses, updated names, and vital status from TransUnion and LexisNexis; (b) vital status from the Social Security Administration (SSA) Data for Epidemiological Researchers; (c) cause of death from the National Death Index (NDI); and, (d) all primary invasive and in situ bladder cancer incidences from 55 state, territorial and federal cancer registries. ATSDR will use these data to assess the impact of exposure at Camp Lejeune on cancer incidence and mortality.
• Case Investigation of Cervical Cancer (CICC) Study. The CICC Study seeks to understand why women continue to get a disease that is largely preventable with appropriate screening and follow-up which allow for detection and treatment of cervical neoplasia prior to invasion. The study worked with three central cancer registries to identify women recently diagnosed with invasive cervical cancer. Women were asked to complete surveys to elicit information on barriers and facilitators to screening and care, and to consent to medical chart abstraction. Medical charts in the 5 years prior to diagnosis were reviewed for screening history, follow-up and treatment procedures, and any additional information related to diagnosis. Online surveys were also completed by members of a cervical cancer survivor network. Results were presented at national conferences and manuscripts are underway.
• Reassessment of Monitoring the Impact of a Prophylactic HPV vaccine on HPV Types in Cancers: Using Tissues from Central Cancer Registries (HPV Typing Study). This study seeks to assess the preliminary impact of the HPV vaccine in select cancers and to establish a surveillance protocol for continued monitoring. Tumor samples from cervical cancer and other HPV-associated cancers were gathered by central cancer registries and shipped to the CDC HPV Lab for HPV genotyping analysis. Individual-level registry data and pathology reports were also gathered. This project was the second wave of data collection for the HPV Typing Study. Results were presented at national conferences and manuscripts are underway.

Other recently completed research includes: evaluation of an educational intervention to increase cervical cancer screening intervals; examination of knowledge, attitudes and beliefs related to Pap and HPV testing among underserved patients and their providers; evaluation of clinic-level interventions to increase colon cancer screening rates; investigation of factors associated with alcohol use trajectories among older Americans; assessment of physician practices and attitudes related to prostate cancer screening; and support for the reprioritization efforts of the Community Preventive Services Task Force and support for the website update of the Community Guide Branch.