The first meeting of the quarter for the Computational Demography Working Group (CDWG) will be this Wednesday, 2/5/2020, 12:00 PM in Raitt Hall room 223. During this meeting, CSDE Trainees Neal Marquez and Connor Gilroy will lead a tutorial introduction to tidycensus and related tools for working with US Census data in R. All are welcome, and food will be provided. CDWG is a special interest group cosponsored by CSDE and the eScience Institute. CDWG meets several times a quarter to provide an interdisciplinary forum for discussions of digital and computational approaches to demographic research. If you are interested in the group, you can find out more by visiting the CDWG website or by joining the mailing list.

The UW’s Population Health Initiative is seeking stories and features to showcase in the new Hans Rosling Center for Population Health.  A key component of the new Hans Rosling Center for Population Health is telling the story of the major advances, achievements, and contributors to improvements in population health (i.e., human health, environmental resilience, social and economic equity) that have occurred both domestically and internationally. The Population Health Initiative is hoping to secure input from all of our schools, colleges, and campuses via survey to help show how each of the university’s disciplines have contributed to improvements in health and well-being. This input will be converted to short passages of text that are laser engraved on wooden blocks that make up the feature walls next to main building entrances.

Feedback is welcome from all faculty, students, and staff of the UW. The survey will close at 5 p.m. (Pacific) on Tuesday, February 18, 2020. More information can be found by visiting our website or the survey itself (https://is.gd/rosling_center).

The National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) will host the Health Disparities Research Institute (HDRI) from August 3-7, 2020 at the NIH campus. Extramural scientists who are early in their careers and have a research focus in minority health and health disparities are encouraged to apply to the institute. The HDRI aims to support the research career development of promising early-career minority health and health disparities research scientists and stimulate research in disciplines supported by health disparities science. The program will feature lectures, mock grant reviews, seminars, and small group discussions on research relevant to minority health and health disparities. It will also include sessions with NIH scientific staff engaged in related health disparities research across the various institutes and centers.

Applications will only be accepted from extramural scientists who meet NIH’s Early Stage Investigator (ESI) eligibility criteria. All applications must be submitted via the HDRI application portal by the due date; emailed applications will not be accepted. Applicants are encouraged to apply before the deadline since late submissions will not be accepted.

• HDRI Application Portal Opens: Monday, February 3rd, 2020 (9:00am EST)
• HDRI Application Portal Closes: Monday, March 9th, 2020 (5:00pm EST)

For questions or more information, visit: https://nimhd.nih.gov/programs/edu-training/hd-research-institute or email HDRI@nih.gov

This Friday, Jennifer Van Hook from the Pennsylvania State University will discuss educational mobility among Mexican Americans and how cross-sectional assessments of Mexican-American integration are misleading and underestimate this group’s prospects going forward. Concerns about the integration of Mexican-Americans have been amplified by the phenomenon of third generation delay, whereby the 3rd-or-higher generation has similar or lower educational attainment than the 2nd generation in analyses of cross-sectional data.  Using unique longitudinal data, however, Van Hook and her team find no evidence of third generation delay. Although Mexican-Americans still experience disadvantages, the educational attainment of third-generation Mexican-Americans increased dramatically and consistently across generations. The third-generation delay pattern seen in cross-sectional analyses stems in large part from historical disadvantages in starting points and educational mobility.  Van Hook and her team’s results reveal dramatic improvements in Mexican-American educational opportunities among the children of immigrants since the 1970s—contrary to the results from cross-sectional analyses.