CSDE Affiliate Jane Lee, Assistant Professor at the School of Social Work, is hosting Susan Cassels, Associate Professor of Geography and Research Associate in the Broom Center for Demography at the University of California-Santa Barbara, for a seminar on 5/21/2019, 11:00 AM-12:30 PM. Students are welcome to join Prof. Cassels for a luncheon following the seminar, at 12:30-1:30 PM (RSVP to Chloe at clotilde@uw.edu). Lee is hosting this seminar as part of a CSDE seed grant, which can be used to convene field experts and consultants. Learn more and apply to a CSDE seed grant here!
How can geographic knowledge about mobility, sexual health and HIV risk behavior help achieve HIV prevention targets, especially for men who have sex with men (MSM) of color? This talk will present some findings from two studies of population mobility and the geography of sex: a survey of MSM in Seattle (n = 350), and a qualitative study of Latinx and African American MSM in Los Angles (n = 20). We find remarkably high age specific migration rates among MSM, but no strong evidence to suggest that recent mobility is associated with increased HIV risk behavior. Nonetheless, qualitative evidence shows distinct migration trajectories and sexual health experiences over the lifecourse for MSM living in Los Angles. This work suggests that the context of moving, as opposed to simply being mobile, may matter for defining and prioritizing HIV prevention efforts. Lastly, I discuss how a geographic perspective can continue to support HIV prevention efforts, including an emphasis on neighborhoods, activity spaces, and the geography of sex.
Cassels’s work spans many disciplines, including demography, epidemiology, and geography. Her research interests are in the areas of population health, migration, epidemic modeling, HIV/AIDS, and sexual networks. Currently, her research is focused on migration and residential mobility and its effects on sexual risk behavior, sexual network structure and HIV transmission. Cassels’s current research is on social and structural barriers to HIV care for minority and foreign-born Hispanic men who have sex with men in Southern California.
The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences is receiving articles for an issue on “Wealth Inequality and Child Development: New Evidence for Policy and Practice.” The issue will be co-edited by CSDE Affiliate Heather Hill, Associate Professor at the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance, and Christina Gibson-Davis, from Duke University. Prospective contributors should submit a CV and an abstract of their study along with supporting material by June 24, 2019.
Wealth inequality—the unequal distribution of assets and debts across a population—has reached historic levels in the United States, particularly for households with children. Among households with a resident child under the age of eighteen, the increase in wealth inequality has outpaced the rise in income inequality, and such households have higher levels of wealth inequality than other household types. To stimulate the academic and policy conversation on wealth inequality, this volume will examine the contours and consequences of wealth inequality for child households and for child outcomes. Our issue will feature original theoretical and empirical work that builds our understanding of the implications of wealth inequality for child development and offers insights into the most promising policies and programs to reduce wealth inequality and its potentially far-reaching effects.
Sponsor: NIH
Program: NIH Director’s Early Independence Awards (DP5 Clinical Trial Optional) https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-RM-19-008.html
Program number: RFA-RM-19-008
Award amount: $1,250,000, plus F&A
Number of applications UW can put forward: 2
OR internal deadline: 5/30/19
OSP deadline: 9/4/19
Sponsor deadline: 9/13/19
Program Description
The NIH Director’s Early Independence Award supports exceptional investigators who wish to pursue independent research essentially after completion of their terminal doctoral/research degree or end of post-graduate clinical training, thereby forgoing the traditional post-doctoral training period and accelerating their entry into an independent research career. For the program to support the best possible researchers and research, applications are sought which reflect the full diversity of the research workforce. Individuals from diverse backgrounds and from the full spectrum of eligible institutions in all geographic locations are strongly encouraged to apply to this Funding Opportunity Announcement. In addition, applications in all topics relevant to the broad mission of NIH are welcome, including, but not limited to, topics in the behavioral, social, biomedical, applied, and formal sciences and topics that may involve basic, translational, or clinical research. The NIH Director’s Early Independence Award is a component of the High-Risk, High-Reward Research program of the NIH Common Fund.
Pre-proposal instructions
Please submit:
- a one-page letter of intent with a description of proposed aims and approach
- CV (not NIH format) of the PI
- A letter of support from the Dean or Chair. This letter of support signifies that the Dean or Chair have ensured that the nominee and application are likely to be of sufficient quality to be competitive nationally
to research@uw.edu by 5:00 PM Thursday May 30, 2019.Proposals are due to the sponsor 9/13/19, so you will need to have your materials in to the Office of Sponsored Programs by 9/4/19 for processing, if given the go ahead by the Proposal Review Committee. Other open limited submissions opportunities, as well as the internal proposal review committee review and selection process outline, are here: http://www.uw.edu/research/funding/limited-submissions/. Please feel free to email us at research@uw.edu with questions or information on any limited submission opportunities that should be but are not already listed on that page.
CSDE’s Biodemography Director Ellie Brindle will serve as a biomarker consultant for the Demographic and Health Surveys 8th wave. Since 1984, the USAID-funded DHS Program has provided countries with technical support for implementing hundreds of household surveys in over 90 countries. USAID contracts with ICF International to implement the DHS Program with additional technical assistance from partners including PATH. Ellie provided support for biomarker protocol development, field biomarker data collection training and laboratory training for the previous wave. PATH and UW have just reached an agreement that will allow Ellie to continue to provide technical assistance in support of USAID’s plans to expand its collection of biomarker data in the 8th wave.
More information on the DHS program here and here.
Last week, CSDE Affiliate Ann Bostrom, Weyerhaeuser Endowed Professor in Environmental Policy at the Evans School, gave a Distinguished Lecture in the Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences at the National Science Foundation. Bostrom discussed how the effectiveness and costs of policies to slow or stop climate change should, for a rational actor, influence policy preferences, but that research on risk perceptions and decision making suggests that emotional responses to climate change may be as or more important.
In a nationally representative survey of U.S. adults we asked people for their own ideas about how to slow or stop climate change, then their judgments of possible policy strategies. A majority supported slowing or stopping climate change by reducing carbon emissions. Respondents differentiated systematically between the ease and effectiveness of actions and assessed government policies as more effective than personal actions. However, they differentiated little between the effectiveness of possible individual actions, or between the effectiveness of diverse government policies. Even after controlling for perceived costs, knowledge, and political ideology, perceived effectiveness of policies is positively associated with policy preferences, as are perceptions of climate change as a proximate risk. Emotions such as concern and fear—but not hope—mediate the influence of these two factors on policy preferences.
Closing the know-do gap – evidence-based policy capacity in South Africa.
Bin Yu, Chancellor’s Professor, Departments of Statistics and EECS, University of California, Berkeley, statistics.berkeley.edu/~binyu
Abstract
In this talk, I’d like to discuss the intertwining importance and connections of three principles of data science in the title and the PCS workflow that is built on the three principles for a data science life cycle including problem formulation, data cleaning, EDA, modeling, post-hoc analysis and data conclusions. The principles will be demonstrated in the context of two collaborative projects in neuroscience and genomics for interpretable data results and testable hypothesis generation. If time allows, I will present proposed PCS inference that includes perturbation intervals and PCS hypothesis testing. The PCS inference uses prediction screening and takes into account both data and model perturbations. Finally, a PCS documentation is proposed based on Rmarkdown, iPython, or Jupyter Notebook, with publicly available, reproducible codes and narratives to back up human choices made throughout a data science life cycle. The PCS workflow and documentation are demonstrated in a genomics case study available on Zenodo.
Links to papers: [1] Three principles of data science: predictability, computability and stability (PCS) (https://arxiv.org/abs/1901.08152). [2] Interpretable machine learning: definitions, methods and applications (https://arxiv.org/abs/1901.04592)
I’ve attached a flyer for BIOA 455, the lab methods course that I will teach in in the Biodemography Lab in Fall 2019. The course is titled ‘Laboratory Methods in Hormones and Behavior’, but is still listed in registrar under old name (Reproductive Ecology Lab Seminar, official name change did not go through yet). Please circulate among students/appropriate listservs for CSDE and the Biodemography lab.
Registration will be by add code only. There are no pre-reqs for the course, but first preference will be given to graduate students and senior undergraduate students with backgrounds and interests in lab and quantitative methods.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Deirdre Cooper Owens is an Associate Professor of History at Queens College, CUNY and an Organization of American Historians’ (OAH) Distinguished Lecturer. Cooper Owens has won a number of awards and honors that range from serving as an American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology Fellow in Washington, D.C. to being the inaugural recipient of the Zora Neale Hurston Award from the Black Feminist Project. Her first book, Medical Bondage: Race, Gender and the Origins of American Gynecology (UGA Press, 2017) won the 2018 Darlene Clark Hine Book Award from the OAH. Cooper Owens is also the Director of the Program in African American History at the Library Company of Philadelphia, the country’s oldest cultural institution. Currently, she is working on a second book project that examines mental illness during the era of United States slavery and is also writing a popular biography of Harriet Tubman that examines her through the lens of disability.
ABOUT THIS LECTURE SERIES
This lecture was established to honor the memory of our beloved colleague, Stephanie M.H. Camp, who was the Donald W. Logan Family Endowed Chair in American History, and the author of the award-winning book Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South (2004). Before her untimely death in 2014, Professor Camp was writing a book about race and beauty. Her work remains a powerful influence on the fields of race, gender, and slavery in and beyond American history. This lecture is made possible by the generous contributions to the Stephanie Camp Lecture Fund for the History of Race and Gender, www.giving.uw.edu/StephanieCamp.