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Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology

OBSSR Director’s Webinar: “What we are learning from talking to scientists about science communication.” (5/19/2020)

John Besley, Ph.D., Ellis N. Brandt Professor of Public Relations, Michigan State University. Visit here to learn more and register (required).

Interdisciplinary Association of Population Health. May 21, 2020 – 12pm EDT (Webinar). “Balancing health and economic considerations in COVID-19 responses: Dilemmas and opportunities for population health”. Join Drs. Erika Blacksher, Frederick Zimmerman, and Roland Thorpe for a panel discussion on the impacts on both health and economics of the current COVID-19 pandemic. This event will be moderated by Dr. Julie Maslowsky. Registration is now open! Click here to learn more.

Washington Research Foundation (WRF) Post-Doc Fellowships

WRF will support up to 10 new highly creative and dedicated postdoctoral scientists each year at research institutions in Washington state. Fellows will conduct groundbreaking work on their own original projects addressing unmet public needs. Our ultimate goal is for the Fellows’ research to benefit the public through the creation of products and services.

UW-Madison Post-Doc in Child, Adolescent, Reproductive Health Disparities

The HDRS Program is now accepting applications for one postdoctoral position available September 1, 2020. Applications will be reviewed until the position is filled

The HDRS Postdoctoral Fellowship Program funded since 2007 by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development and supported by the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology in the School of Medicine and Public Health provides training at the postdoctoral level in interdisciplinary research that addresses disparities in health status and health outcomes among minority populations with an emphasis on maternal/child, adolescent and family health.

Sociological Perspectives Call for Paper Proposals: Covid-19 & Society

In a matter of months, the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has quickly spread around the world and undermined seemingly stable social systems. Although researchers and practitioners from public health, epidemiology, and medicine currently dominate public discussions, the field of sociology is uniquely qualified to assess the social causes and social consequences of COVID-19. The successes and failures of local, state, and national governments in containing the spread of the virus have ramifications for the health and well-being of individuals, families, communities, and social institutions. Sociologists are well positioned to make intellectual contributions to public discourses, debates, and policies about epidemics, pandemics, and their corresponding social responses.

This special issue seeks manuscripts that advance sociological perspectives on the intersection of coronavirus and society. By providing an outlet for foundational theoretical and empirical sociological research on COVID-19 and society, this volume will interrogate structural and interpersonal responses to a newly discovered virus. Studies can focus on local, state, national, and/or cross-national reactions to the pandemic.

Call for Papers: Annual Migration & Health Report

The National Population Council of Mexico (CONAPO, for its Spanish acronym) and the Health Initiative of the Americas, a program of the School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley (HIA-UC), School of Public Health, would like to invite you to participate in the 2020 “Migration and Health” report; an annual series published since 2008. The objective of these publications is to make current issues related to the health of the migrant population from the Mexico-United States corridor accessible to officials, academia, civil association, and the general public. The 2020 edition will consist of short articles selected by an internal HIA-UC and CONAPO committee. The selected articles will then be evaluated by an external, specialized binational editorial committee. During both evaluations, articles will be reviewed on previously established criteria, quality, and relevance. The following topics, although not exclusive, have been identified as priorities within a migration framework: Mental Health, Chronic Diseases, Infectious Diseases, Women’s Health, Occupational Health, Access to Health Care, and Violence from the Public Health Perspective

Now Accepting Submissions to New Journal: “Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and the City”

The Urban Affairs Association is delighted to announce their new journal, the Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and the City (JRE), in which they are now making an open call for paper submissions.  The journal will serve as an outlet for examining the complex relations between race, ethnicity and other vectors of identity, including gender, class, religion, and sexuality; exploring the influence of these complexities in shaping the social, economic, political, environmental, and cultural dimensions of urban spaces; and deconstructing the role of colonial and post-colonial practices and discourses on race and ethnicity in shaping the urban spaces of everyday life within a global context. They are particularly interested in groundbreaking theoretical, empirical, and engaged scholarship manuscripts that meet the aims and scopes of the journal and set the tone for future issues of the JRE. They invite manuscripts based on original empirical work, as well as review articles and shorter perspective pieces.

COVID Data, COVID models: Trailing Indicators, Leading Indicators, and the IHME Health Service Utilization Model

This Friday, CSDE will host a panel on COVID data and models. The speakers include CSDE Affiliates Abraham Flaxman and Ali Mokdad from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IMHE). Dr. Flaxman will share some of the methods we have been using at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) in the UW School of Medicine to project the global course of the COVID outbreak and the demands it may put on local health systems. Dr. Mokdad will present on IHME’s approach to dissemination and engagement for these results.

NSF RAPID: Collaborative Research: COVID-19 Disinformation Disparities

Sara Curran, CSDE Director, and Dr. Jessica Beyer (Henry M. Jackson School) with colleagues at Louisiana State University were awarded a collaborative NSF RAPID to examine demographic and social disparities in responses to variably trustworthy information on Twitter. The project compares sentiment and language use patterns among a population of Twitter users, analyzing how these characteristics evolve through the recognition of the emergency, the peak of the crisis, and the mitigation of the pandemic in the U.S. The project will use computational methods to understand sentiment patterns and language use on Twitter and link tweets and relevant entities to corresponding longitudinal data about trustworthy information sources, including news media sources and official emergency guidance, policies, and orders. Using timestamps and derived location, we will associate tweets with daily disease-specific rates and annual demographic and socio-economic information. Data about the surrounding information context, including reporting trends and framing of the crisis, sources of health information, and information-seeking behavior about COVID-19 will provide tools for assessing the validity and reliability of our inferences about the patterns of sentiment and language use.

Elizabeth Halloran Comments on the Safety and Risks of Reopening Across the U.S. for the Business Insider

Across the country, states are lifting lockdown measures and easing restrictions—at least 30 states plan to reopen soon. As this trend continues, experts such as CSDE Affiliate Elizabeth Halloran are examining steps the country must consider to safely reopen. Halloran commented in recent a Business Insider article on how the country may be reopening too soon. In the article, Halloran states that if the U.S. plans to reach the point of dramatic declines in daily cases and individuals returning to work, the country “would have to ramp up testing and contract tracing.” Halloran further emphasizes how crucial it is to remove those infected from circulation and that “what we’ve done is reduce our transmission, and every model shows that if we open things up now, we will just have a rebound.”