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Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology

Raftery Provides Empirical Perspectives on US’ Declining Birthrates

In a recent essay in The Conversation, CSDE Affiliate Adrian Raftery offers nuanced and comparative insights on the CDC’s May 2021 report about a decline in U.S. birth rates. In the essay, Raftery cautions against a panicked reaction, noting that falling birth rates have been true in the U.S. for forty years, such trends are similar to other similarly-situated nations, and that the very recent and dramatic decline in immigration to the U.S. contributed to the seemingly startling decline in birthrates.

Igra and Kenworthy’s Study on Crowdfunding and COVID-19 Makes News!

CSDE Affiliate Nora Kenworthy, along with  UW Sociology PhD Student Mark Igra and other co-authors, recently published an article in  Social Science & Medicine examining the scope and impacts of COVID-19 related crowdfunding in the early months of the pandemic and assessing how existing social and health inequities shaped crowdfunding use and outcomes. The article received significant attention in the media and a special press release from the UW. Using data collected from all US-based GoFundMe campaigns mentioning COVID or coronavirus, the authors use a descriptive analysis and a series of negative binomial and linear models to assess the contributions of demographic factors and COVID-19 impacts to campaign creation and outcome. They find that Crowdfunding provides substantially higher benefits in wealthier counties with higher levels of education, and differential outcomes based on the racial and ethnic composition of county population. Taken together, the findings demonstrate how a market-oriented digital technology used to respond to large-scale crisis can exacerbate inequalities and further benefit already privileged groups. CSDE Research Scientist Christine Leibbrand provided statistical consulting for the study.

Bleil Receives R01 Grant from NIH!

Congratulations to CSDE Affiliate Dr. Maria Bleil, Research Assistant Professor in Nursing, who recently received a NIH/NHLBI R01 Grant to study the effect of postnatal parenting support in primary care on cardiometabolic health in early childhood among at-risk families. The study aims to determine whether benefits of a Promoting First Relationships (PFR intervention), originally designed to impact parent-child behavioral and relationship outcomes in infancy extend to the child’s cardiometabolic health in early childhood. NIH funding will support the return of 214 mother-child dyads (85% of 252 total families) who participated in the original RCT. CSDE will provide support for the biomarker data collection, including assistance in developing protocols and training the study staff to conduct on-site point-of-care blood testing, and to collect biospecimens. CSDE’s Biodemography Lab will assay the resulting specimens for biomarkers that may be related to cardiometabolic health. Once the data are collected, CSDE will be supporting Bleil’s statistical analyses.

Barrington Appointed Director of ARCH – Center for Anti-Racism in Community Health

Congratulations to CSDE Affiliate Wendy Barrington for her new position at the School of Public Health as the inaugural Director of the Center for Anti-Racism in Community Health (ARCH). This important and extraordinary initiative at the School of Public Health will be well-served by Dr. Barrington’s vision for, and practice of, dismantling racism and racist institutions impacting population health.

In this new role, she will hold joint appointments in Health Services, Epidemiology, and Child, Family, and Population Health Nursing, contingent upon approval by several review bodies, including the SPH Faculty Council and the UW Board of Regents. A hallmark of Wendy’s approach is to co-create, co-design, and co-operate to realize a shared strategy to maximize anti-racist impact for community health promotion and a research agenda to support its implementation. In that spirit, please look forward to a series of listening sessions and opportunities for engagement to inform the ARCH Center priorities and structure starting Fall 2021.

CSDE 2020-21 Workshop Recordings Available on Website!

Have you ever missed a CSDE workshop and wished that you could have attended? Good news! CSDE now has all of its 2020-2021 workshop recordings available on YouTube. You can find the workshop recordings by going to CSDE’s Workshop Webpage and clicking on the specific workshop that you would like to watch. You will find the link to the recording on that workshop’s webpage. The following workshops have recordings available:

We hope to offer even more workshop recordings in the future! For questions about workshops or to suggest a future workshop, please email Christine Leibbrand (cleibb@uw.edu).