The University of Washington is home to the Northwest Federal Statistical Research Data Center (NWFSRDC), a secure space used to access federal microdata run by the Census Bureau in collaboration with CSDE. Researchers are able to submit projects for approval that make use of federal data and carry out their analysis within the RDC. One significant hurdle to carrying out data analysis in an FSRDC is the several month and paperwork-intensive process of researchers on the team receiving Special Sworn Status (SSS) from the Census Bureau which enables entrance to the RDC.
CSDE Research Scientist Jessica Godwin, PhD, recently received SSS to work on a project led by Beth Fussell (Brown University) estimating migration flows between Puerto Rico and the mainland U.S. following the devastating Hurricane María in 2017. Godwin is providing statistical support for estimating these migration flows using decennial census and American Community Survey data linked to the Census’s master address file.
Both Godwin and CSDE Research Scientist and Director of the NWFSRDC, Sofia Ayala, PhD, have SSS and are available to aid CSDE Affiliate and Trainee research with restricted federal data. To arrange a consultation appointment with Jessica Godwin to discuss potential NWFSRDC research or any of CSDE’s scientific support staff, please use the CSDE Science Core Consultation Request form.
This past spring, the University of Washington Office for Nursing Research & Innovation were able to award $100,000 to four research projects from UW School of Nursing investigators. This award came from the Research Intramural Funding Program (RIFP) which is designed to enhance the research environment within the School of Nursing by providing faculty with seed funding to initiate innovative studies and collect pilot data that will lead to advancements in our understanding of clinically relevant issues. CSDE Affiliate Maria Bleil (Child, Family, and Population Health Nursing) was one of the four recipients who received this award with her research study titled, “Does exposure to air pollution accelerate pubertal development in girls?” Congratulations Dr. Bleil! To learn more about this program and to view the other award recipients, visit this link.
The CO2 Foundation is excited to announce its third funding opportunity: Reducing the Threats of Extreme Weather Events.
In addition to the gradual climate changes of the last sixty years, we have seen recent surges in extreme weather that suggest an abrupt climate shift. For example, the annual tally of big windstorms in the US went from a baseline rate of 1.2 per year before 2008 up to 19 events in 2023, an order of magnitude more. This threat has a different time scale than gradual global warming. We must now prepare for big troubles in the next decade.
Droughts and fires, heavy flooding, mega heatwaves, stalled hurricanes, windstorms, and extreme cold are already causing unprecedented losses to human lives and well-being, infrastructure, agriculture, and ecosystems. We must think big and implement quickly to intervene.
The CO2 Foundation funds innovative smaller-scale projects that can accomplish a lot in a short timeframe, which might otherwise fall through the cracks. We seek proposals to support timely interventions for extreme weather and/or prepare communities for the impacts of a rapidly changing climate system.
Examples include small workshops to explore innovative, fast-track solutions; new ways of reaching new audiences; or early research into the most promising protective interventions. Because civilization must survive until climate change and extreme weather are no longer a threat, we need to be resilient and to cooperate with each other.
The program aims to distribute $25,000-$100,000 contributions to projects that:
- Engage diverse expertise: Apply relevant scientific and/or community perspectives to extreme weather interventions.
- Share process and outcomes: Communicate broadly on successes and challenges, lessons learned from what has been attempted.
- Turn innovation into impact: Explore how ideas and practices can generate solutions, action, and change across different contexts.
And we expect to fund these types of activities:
- Conferences & Workshops: Convening diverse stakeholders to address extreme weather topics.
- Research: Focusing on promising strategies to address extreme weather.
- Communications: Broadly distributed storytelling about extreme weather impacts, reporting on community-scale and society-wide responses and future risks, or new communication methods or audiences.
- Pilot Project Implementation: Moving what has been imagined out into the world with a focus on co-benefits, project sustainability/durability, and replicating what works.
We will prioritize applications received before July 31, 2025 from 501(c)3 organizations or projects with nonprofit fiscal sponsorship. Please see our Grants page for more information about our grantmaking program.
CSDE Affiliates Katarina Guttmanova (Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences) and Anjum Hajat (Epidemiology) recently published a paper with lead author Andrea Oliva (Seattle Children’s Research Institute) in Child & Youth Care Forum: Journal of Research and Practice in Children’s Services titled, “Depressive Symptoms Over the Course of Adolescence Among Latinx Children of Immigrants and White Youth From Small Towns in the United States.” Hispanic/Latinx make up 19% of the total population of the United States and are one of the fastest growing groups in the country. This growth has been notable among youth from rural and small-town communities and understanding mental health during adolescence in this population can have a significant impact on public health. In this paper, Oliva, Dr. Guttmanova, Dr. Hajat, and co-authors compare depressive symptoms during adolescence among Latinx Children of Immigrants, Latinx Children of Non-Immigrants, and non-Latinx White Children of Non-Immigrants from small towns in the United States. To learn more about this research and read the full paper, visit this link.
County Health Rankings & Roadmaps (CHR&R) is inviting original visualizations using CHR&R data to communicate the structural determinants of health, or the laws, policies, and power structures that drive health outcomes. We want to see how you use CHR&R (and other public data) to tell stories that make the forces that shape health visible.
We believe that working together amplifies impact. In this open call for data visualizations, we’re honoring the power of our connectedness — the reality that your eyes and experience create a unique perspective on the health story we share. Recognizing how our fates are intertwined is central to transforming the structural forces that shape opportunities for health.
Who should submit:
Students, researchers, analysts, public health professionals, advocates and community members are encouraged to participate. Submissions are welcome from individuals and teams. Multiple entries are allowed through August 1, 2025. Winners will be announced August 8, 2025.
What to submit:
- A static or interactive visualization which utilizes at least one CHR&R measure. Examples include maps, plots, dashboards and infographics. Any U.S. geography and timeframe is acceptable.
- A description between 250–500 words that explains:
- which structural determinant(s) are visualized;
- why these determinants are important to community health; and,
- what inspired your choice of measures and visual format.
- Selected submissions will be recognized on the CHR&R website and highlighted in our newsletter and social media. Winners may be invited to collaborate with CHR&R experts on future data features or presentations.
Submissions will be judged by CHR&R staff based on their:
- relevance to the structural determinants of health
- clarity of message
- design and technical execution
- creativity
Where to find data:
At CHR&R, we believe that we all do better when we all do better — which is why we’re committed to building and contributing to data democratization. This initiative reflects our belief that shared knowledge and innovation can drive meaningful change.
Submit your entry using the form linked here.
CSDE Affiliate Stipica Mudrazija (Health Systems and Population Health) and co-authors recently published a research article in the European Journal of Ageing titled, “The Hidden Crisis: Classifying unmet Healthcare Needs in European Older Adults during COVID-19.” In this study, Dr. Mudrazija and co-authors investigate the unmet healthcare needs of older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic, leveraging data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and the two waves of the SHARE Corona Survey (SCS) conducted in 2020 and 2021. To learn more about this research and read the full article, visit this link.
Description: A good rule of thumb in data wrangling and programming is: if you find yourself copying and pasting a block of code more than twice, it’s time to stop and think about a more efficient approach. This course will introduce functional programming and other techniques to reduce redundancy and enhance the computational efficiency of your R code. We will cover practical skills frequently used in data projects, such as manipulating multiple columns, writing anonymous functions, using map(), nesting dataframes within tibbles, and running multiple regressions and comparing them results simultaneously. Attendees are expected to have basic familiarity with data wrangling using dplyr in R.
- Instructor: Brian Leung, CSSCR Consultant
- Date: Wednesday, August 6, 2025
- Time: 11:00am – 12:20pm
- Location: Savery 121 (Small Lab)
- Register here.
CSDE External Affiliate Daiki Hiramori (Hosei University) recently published a book chapter in the Second International Handbook on the Demography of Sexuality titled, “Understanding Sexual Orientation Identity, Sexual/Romantic Attraction, and Sexual Behavior beyond Western Societies: The Case of Japan.” Dr. Hiramori discusses how important it is to examine the complex intersections of sexual orientation identity, sexual/romance attraction, and sexual behavior, however, most of the studies on these topics use data from Western countries that have particular histories of sexuality that limit the generalizability of the findings beyond Western societies. In this chapter, Dr. Hiramori and his co-author Dr. Saori Kamano describe the dimensions of sexuality in Japan, where historically no religious authority has condemned same-sex behavior and legal prohibitions against same-sex relations existed for only a decade in the late nineteenth century. To learn more about this study and read the full chapter, visit this link.
Description: This workshop provides a brief, practical introduction to working in ATLAS.ti, by marrying the functionality of the program with the fundamentals of the qualitative methodology. This will include importing text documents, creating codes, memos and comments, and exploring thematic relationships through analysis. The course assumes no familiarity with Atlas.ti
- Instructor: Baishakhi Basu, CSSCR Consultant
- Date: Wednesday, August 6, 2025
- Time: 3:00pm – 4:20pm
- Location: Savery 121 (Small Lab)
- Register here.