Dr. Philip Hurvitz joined CSDE in 2019 to lead the UW Data Collaborative, a high-performance, high-capacity, secure data storage and computing cluster that allows researchers at the UW to access and analyze data that contain highly sensitive personal or health information. He holds a PhD in Urban Design and Planning and a Master of Forest Resources (MFR) from UW and has extensive research and methods expertise in the quantitative analysis of environment and human behavior, GIS, and informatics. His research on the built environment and health-related behaviors has been published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, Spatial and Spatio-temporal Epidemiology, Population Health Metrics, and the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, to name just a few of his recent works. At CSDE, he provides end-to-end research consultations to both students and faculty for research related to geographic information systems analyses, database management, processing of large data sets, use of ubiquitous sensing devices such as global positioning system data loggers and accelerometers, and automation of data processing.  Hurvitz also teaches in CSDE’s certificate program and short course workshops.

Dr. Hurvitz’s current collaborations include leading data management and GIS work for the Urban Form Lab at UW, which does research focusing on quantitative analysis of environment and human behavior, with particular focus on built environment and health- and transportation-related behavior. He has also promoted and supported use of GIS at UW since 1997 as the lead contact for the UW’s site license with Esri and manager of the UW GIS Listserv, UW-GIS-L.Previous to his appointment in CSDE, he was GIS Specialist and Lecturer in the UW College of Forest Resources (1997-2004), Research Assistant (2004-2010) and Research Associate (2011-2012) at the UW Urban Form Lab, and Research Assistant Professor (2012-2019) in the UW Department of Urban Design and Planning.

Dr. Emily Williams is a Professor of Health Services and Director of the Doctoral Program in Health Services at the University of Washington. She is also core investigator and co-director of the post-doctoral fellowship at the Denver-Seattle Center of Innovation for Veteran-Centered Value-Driven Care at VA Puget Sound Health Services Research & Development (HSR&D). Her research is specifically focused on increasing access to evidence-based treatments for unhealthy alcohol and other substance use in diverse medical settings, including understanding and promoting equity in this care for vulnerable patient subpopulations (e.g., those with HIV and HCV, racial/ethnic minorities, persons living in rural areas, transgender patients, and women).Recently, Dr. Williams, along with co-authors, published a study in Drug and Alchohol Dependence examining the effect of racial/ethnic discrimination on the risk of DSM-5 alcohol use disorder (AUD) severity levels. They find that in comparison to those who did not experience discrimination, those who experienced discrimination had a 1.5-fold greater risk of mild AUD, a 1.6-fold greater risk of moderate AUD, and a 2.3-fold greater risk of severe AUD.

Using a multinomial logistic regression based approach, the authors use data from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol-Related Conditions III to examine associations between measures of racial/ethnic discrimination and past-year AUD severity levels following the DSM-5 definition, while adjusting for poverty thresholds set by the U.S. Census Bureau, and race/ethnicity (American Indian or Alaskan Native; Asian, Native Hawaiian, or Other Pacific Islander; Black or African American; Hispanic or Latino). They also evaluate whether associations between discrimination and AUD severity varied by poverty status and race/ethnicity. To read the article, please click here.

Dr. Brad Wagenaar is an assistant professor in the Department of Global Health at the University of Washington, and a Technical Advisor to Health Alliance International, a Center in the Department of Global Health. His research focuses on using innovative implementation science methods to answer questions around improving public-sector health systems and health policies globally, with an emphasis on improving the prevention and treatment of mental illness in low-resource settings in the US and globally. Dr. Wagenaar recently received a pilot grant from the UW Global Mental Health Program to develop a digital pyschological intervention addressing refugee and immigrant youth mental health in Seattle in the time of COVID-19. Dr. Wagenaar also recently published in BMC Psychiatry, Global Mental Health, Implementation Science, Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes and Frontiers in Public Health on a variety of topics.

Dr. Dan Goldhaber is the Director of the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research (CALDER, caldercenter.org) at the American Institutes for Research and the Director of the Center for Education Data & Research (CEDR, cedr.us) at the University of Washington. Dr. Goldhaber’s work focuses on issues of educational productivity and reform at the K-12 level, including the broad array of human capital policies that influence the composition, distribution, and quality of teachers in the workforce, and connections between students’ K-12 experiences and post secondary outcomes. He has also published in American Economic Review, Journal of Human Resources, Journal of Policy and Management, Economics of Education Review, Education Finance and Policy, and Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis.

UW Statistics Doctoral Student Daphne Liu and CSDE Affiliate Adrian Raftery recently published an article in Population and Development Review examining the impact of education and family planning on fertility decline. Employing a Granger-causality based regression approach, they assess three questions. Is increasing contraceptive use or reducing unmet need more effective in family planning? Is it the number of years women have attended school or current enrollments of children that influence fertility declines? And, which of these factors is most important in explaining fertility decline? Using a combination of the UN’s World Population Prospects data (WPP), the Wittgenstein harmonized education data, the World Bank’s education data, and the UN’s Estimates and Projections of Family Planning indicators for 201 countries from 1970-2015, Liu and Raftery’s study finds that women’s attainment of lower secondary education is one key to accelerating fertility decline, but contraceptive prevalence for modern methods has the strongest accelerating effect. Children’s enrollment levels have no impact on fertility declines.To read the article click here. 

CSDE Affiliate Zack Almquist, along with coauthors, recently published an article in PNAS examining the impact of an uneven population distribution on the spread of the COVID-19 disease spread. Employing a diffusion model based on interpersonal contact networks, they assess the effect of employing more geographically detailed diffusion models based on known spatial features of interpersonal networks. They find that disease diffusion occurs via a long-tailed but monotone decline in the probability of interaction with distance. They conclude that spatial heterogeneity may produce dramatic differences in social exposures to those with the illness and may stress health care delivery systems in ways that are not well captured by standard infectious disease models. To read the article click here.