A team of CSDE scholars featuring trainee Rebecca Rebbe, Social Work, Affiliate Joe Mienko, Senior Research Scientist at Partners for Our Children, Social Work, and Affiliate Ali Rowhani-Rahbar, Associate Professor of Epidemiology, has just published two articles on prenatal substance exposure and child protection. Both papers use population-based linked administrative data, specifically birth, hospital discharge, and child protective services (CPS) records.

The first paper, “Child protection reports and removals of infants diagnosed with prenatal substance exposure,” was published in Child Abuse & Neglect. Findings indicate that most infants diagnosed with  prenatal substance exposure (PSE) were not removed by child protective services. Minority PSE infants were not reported to CPS or removed by CPS more than white infants, presenting opportunities for targeted prevention efforts.

The second, “Hospital Variation in Child Protection Reports of Substance Exposed Infants,” has been published in The Journal of Pediatrics. It finds that hospital-level and individual birth-level factors impact the likelihood of infants prenatally exposed to substances being reported to CPS. Targeted education and improved policies are necessary to ensure more standardized approaches to CPS reporting of prenatal substance exposure.

James R Elliott, Professor of Sociology at Rice University, will discuss newly published findings on how rising natural disaster costs drive rising social inequality over individual lifetimes, and the extent to which federal disaster assistance is exacerbating rather than reducing this social problem. Longitudinal data come from approximately 3,400 randomly selected Americans drawn from the Panel Survey of Income Dynamics who experienced varying degrees of local disaster damage in their counties of residence during 1999-2013. Implications call for wider recognition of how disaster recovery should not just respond to pre-existing social inequalities but also minimize the growth of these inequalities in the years that follow.

This one-day workshop on 10/1/2019 will provide an orientation to the value of interdisciplinary collaboration, challenges inherent in interdisciplinary work, and skills and resources that facilitate interdisciplinary success in population health science. Funded by a grant from NICHD, the PI, Christine Bachrach (University of Maryland) worked closely with several co-investigators including three CSDE Affiliates: Sara Curran, CSDE Director and Professor of International Studies, Sociology & Public Policy, Anjum Hajat, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology, and David Takeuchi, Professor of Social Work (returning to UW in 2019).

Workshop participants will engage with leading population health and interdisciplinary scholars in interactive group exercises and case studies with a focus on the combining the knowledge, theory, and methods of diverse fields to understand and address health disparities. The workshop is open to scientists training and/or working in any field that contributes knowledge, at one or more levels of analysis (from the molecular to the societal and environmental), relevant to understanding the causes of health disparities and/or the ways in which health disparities can be ameliorated. Students who have completed at least two years of post-baccalaureate training in a specific discipline and early career scientists are especially encouraged to apply, but individuals at all career stages are welcome.
Workshop enrollment is limited to facilitate the success of small-group activities.

The workshop will take place on 10/1/2019, 9:30 AM – 5:00 PM, at the Sheraton Seattle Hotel, in Seattle. Applications will be accepted through 5/5/2019. Applicants will be notified by the end of June. Funding to defray travel costs will be available on a limited basis.

CSDE Affiliate Jennifer Otten, Associate Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health Services, was lead author on a study that found that childcare facilities’ labor costs increased after the wage hikes. She looked at payroll data from 2014 and 2016 for about 200 businesses, surveyed 41 childcare directors three times, and interviewed 15 directors. Otten found that more than half saw their costs increase, often raising tuition and cutting staff hours or jobs as a response. According to Otten, “this study illustrates how singular policies can affect more than just payroll and can shape organizational structure and service delivery.”

The story also featured another UW study on the minimum wage, which did not find significant evidence of supermarket food price increases linked to the wage hike. Other than The Seattle Times, the studies were also featured in MyNorthwest and King 5,

UW’s Geography Department is hosting Dr. Chuan Liao’s visit and talk entitled “Spatial Science of Human-Environment Systems for Sustainable Development” on Thursday, 2/14/2019, 3:30-5:00 PM in ECE 026. On Friday, 2/15/2019, CSDE is hosting a meeting with Dr. Liao at 11:30 AM-12:00 PM in 114 Raitt Hall. CSDE affiliates, scientists, and students are welcome to join us for both events and learn more about his research.

Dr. Chuan Liao holds a PhD in natural resources from Cornell and is now an assistant professor in the School of Sustainability at Arizona State. Liao is a GIScientist who studies reciprocal human-environment interactions that arise in small farming and pastoralism in forest and rangeland landscapes.  He develops geospatial analytics for understanding the impacts of large-scale land tenure change on the agroecological systems and the sustainability of subsistence pastoralism, with current research in East Africa and Central Asia.

For next week’s Computational Demography meeting, we’ll hold a tutorial on creating research websites. Websites can be useful to showcase and communicate information about particular research projects, working groups, or personal academic profiles more generally. The good news is, the same tools and skills we use for computational research (GitHub, R, etc.) can be repurposed to create websites supporting that work!

We’ll meet Thursday, 2/14/2019, from 12:00-1:30, in Raitt 114. Food will be provided, and all are welcome. The Computational Demography Working Group is co-sponsored by CSDE and eScience.

This meeting will be similar in style to Tim’s GitHub tutorial from last quarter. We’ll focus on using GitHub pages and blogdown, but discuss alternatives as well. Connor will be leading the tutorial with a demo of creating a webpage for the working group itself, and collaborative contributions are more than welcome. Also, mark your calendars for our last meeting of the quarter, on 3/7/2019, when Ian Kennedy will present some of his work linking text data and demography.

The next CSDE Biomarker Working Group meeting will be this Wednesday, February 13, 2:30 – 3:30 PM, in 114 Raitt Hall. We’ll discuss a recent review article relevant to recurring topics of discussion for our group: stress and allostatic load.  This will be an informal discussion (with a brief overview of the article and the issues it raises for those who haven’t read it) and all are welcome.

This article contrasts the allostatic load model, in which coping with stress has a long-term physical health cost, with the authors’ Adaptive Calibration Model, in which the stress response is an adaptive response with costs and benefits. We’ll use this article as a starting point to talk about how varying models of stress and its role in health may translate into practical approaches to biomarker measures of stress and health outcomes.

The purpose of the CSDE Biomarker Working Group is to provide a forum for discussions of practical and theoretical issues associated with collecting and using biomarker data in social and behavioral science research. We hope to provide an opportunity for faculty and students with an interest in biomarker methods to meet researchers with similar interests from departments across campus. Please feel free to forward this announcement to colleagues.  Those who would like to receive regular meeting announcements by email may subscribe to the mailing list here.  If you are interested in joining meetings via video conferencing, please RSVP to Ellie (ebrindle@uw.edu) before each session to receive instructions.