In collaboration with six global partners, Methods4All recently announced the launch of a Cultural Anthropology Methods Program (CAMP) International Curriculum & Community of Practice. Spanning 15 methods modules, there are 50 free YouTube methods lectures that offer the best methodological guidance our nationally-selected Distinguished Teaching Faculty has to offer. All lectures are available in English and captioned in 9 languages. Learn more here.

Hypertension has been identified as a leading cause of maternal morbidity and mortality in the United States, and one that disproportionately impacts Black mothers. In a recent paper that was awarded the Charles E. Gibbs Leadership Prize for the best paper published in Women’s Health Issues in 2024, CSDE Affiliates Monica Keith (Vanderbilt University) and Melanie Martin (Anthropology) demonstrate the impacts of social environments on hypertensive risk as measured by allostatic load among pregnant women. Study findings show that measures of social environments such as household income and partnered status were stronger predictors of hypertensive risk than behavioral factors, with strongest effects observed for Black women. Read the full study here.

CSDE Affiliates Sara Curran and Emmanuela Gakidou with CSDE Scientist June Yang are part of a large multi-institutional team awarded an NIA P60 grant for the virtual Center on Aging, Climate, and Health (CACHE). The initiative is led by the University of Colorado (Hunter, PI) and the City University of New York (Balk, PI) and is joined by the University of Minnesota (Grace, PI), and El Collegio de Mexico (Sanchez, PI). The virtual center facilitates research and fosters collaboration among a wide-range of researchers working at the nexus of aging, health and climate change through targeted interdisciplinary training, information sharing, and investments in research support. Learn more about CACHE here.

Although many governments commonly issue emergency evacuation notices in response to environmental disasters, researchers have not developed measures to systematically evaluate and compare the population burdens of these notices. In a recent research brief in Population Research and Policy Review, CSDE External Affiliate Ethan Raker and co-author Xueqing Zhang introduce the concept of measurement in “person-days” under an emergency order. Person-time measures of emergency orders reveal the population burden of environmental hazards, can be applied broadly to cases like air quality alerts or heat warnings, and help demographers study environmental impacts across locations. Read the full brief here.

When: Friday, Feb 14, 2025 (12:30-1:30PM)

Where: 360 Parrington and on Zoom (register here)

We are looking forward to hosting CSDE Affiliate Amy Bailey (Sociology, University of Illinois at Chicago) on Friday, Feb 14th in Parrington Hall 360 and on Zoom. This seminar is co-sponsored by the Population Health Initiative. 

A number of public health and demographic theories point directly to the importance of past structures and experiences in explaining the health inequity patterns we observe today. The flexible resources Link and Phelan (1995) identify as the driving force behind fundamental causes – money, knowledge, power, prestige, and social connections – have been explicitly shaped by historical processes. Evidence suggests that the contemporary drivers of health and disease are systematically related to historical power relationships. In this paper, we advance history as a fundamental cause of disease. We argue that historical processes have shaped the contemporary patterns of inequitable access to power, social connections, prestige, economic assets, and knowledge, affecting risk of disease and the ability to protect individual and community health. We also identify the ways that historical processes have shaped multiple disease outcomes, multiple risk factors, access to flexible resources, and changes in intervening mechanisms. We believe that the residual trace of history may be viewed through three pathways: 1) Group-level segregation in social and economic spheres; 2) access to power, which shapes policy; and 3) psychological consequences of stigma. We illustrate with an extended example connecting historical white supremacist violence to contemporary pregnancy outcomes.

Amy Kate Bailey a sociologist, demographer, and epidemiologist whose research focuses on demographic approaches combining historical and contemporary sources of data and an interdisciplinary perspective. She earned an MPH in Epidemiology in 2024, and is a Double Dawg, earning a PhD and MA in Sociology at UW. Prof. Bailey is currently on faculty at the University of Illinois Chicago’s Department of Sociology, and a fellow of the Institute for Health Research and Policy. This year, she is a visiting scholar at CSDE. She serves as a Deputy Editor for Demography, and the Editorial Board for Social Science History. Her projects have been funded by NSF, NIH, and the USDA, in addition to multiple intramural sources. With colleagues, she has also constructed multiple data sets. Prof. Bailey’s work has been published in journals including the American Journal of Sociology, The American Sociological Review, Demography, Population Research and Policy Review, and the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Her 2015 book Lynched: The Victims of Southern Mob Violence, co-authored with Stewart E. Tolnay, received the 2016 PUMS Award from the Minnesota Population Center.

Recent analysis from CSDE Affiliate Dan Goldhaber (School of Social Work) highlights the ongoing challenges facing Washington students, teachers, and educational administrators. In response to the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress results for Washington state, Goldhaber notes that student achievement has not recovered from the pandemic, and that students who were struggling before the pandemic are now facing even greater challenges, leading to widening achievement gaps. While Washington scores are on par with national results in many ways, they also serve to highlight the continuing difficulties that students have faced in recent years. Read the full article here.