Speaker: Jessica Hardin, Department of Anthropology, Pacific University

Fellow Host: Brianna Mills

The Samoan islands face unpredicted rates of cardiometabolic disorders, including diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and hypertension. The Pacific Islands more generally have become the focus of sophisticated and historically significant research about what scholars have called the nutrition or epidemiological transition. Research on these disorders in the islands, tend to focus on three main factors that influence health behaviors: wealth increases in the region; fat positivity; and changes in labor patterns leading to decreased physical activity. Indeed, macro-level changes related to urbanization, migration and a changing food environment have all contributed to population-wide rates of cardiometabolic disorders. However, these trends don’t explain the daily struggles that people face when the materials that once indexed wellness, like food and fat, can now also index sickness. Instead of straightforward valorizations of food and fat, as literature on the epidemiological transition might suggest, I saw ambivalence and anxiety about reciprocity and hierarchy communicated through discussions of these materials. Ambiguity around the meaning of health is often left out of the discussion of the emergence of cardiometabolic disorders worldwide but is essential to understanding the rise of these disorders and effective methods for preventing them. In this talk, I parse out three enduring contradictions that show that discerning cardiometabolic risk a social process of interpreting bodies and relationships: to be wealthy and poor places you are risk; foods that have historically created well-being, now place individuals at risk for developing cardiometabolic disorders; and fat can mean both power, generosity, and generativity and potentially laziness, sickness, and moral corruption.

Jessica Hardin is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Pacific University. She is a cultural and medical anthropologist who is interested in how the intersection of medicine and religion shapes lived experiences of chronic illness. As an ethnographer, her work focuses on metabolic disorders to bridge critical medical anthropology (on nutrition, fat, metabolic disorders) and the anthropology of Christianity (on the body, healing, denomination).

The Fellow Host, Brianna Mills, is a PhD candidate in Epidemiology. Her work is focused on identifying risk markers for firearm injury using probabilistic linkage of medical and criminal records, and neighborhood characteristics. Brianna and Dr. Hardin are alumni of Brandeis University’s Anthropology department, with shared interests in how people’s lived experiences are captured by institutional data systems and mixed methods approaches to social determinants of health.

Schedule a meeting with Dr. Hardin here.

CSDE is offering a two-hour workshop on using the basic graphics package in R (https://www.r-project.org/).  It assumes prior experience with R. Come out and sharpen your statistical skills!

CSDE is co-sponsoring an event at the Population Association of America’s 2017 meeting. The panel, Opportunities for Population Health Science in a Changing Context, aims to examine how a shifting political landscape could impact population health research initiatives and plans. It has been organized by the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science (IAPHS) and the NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research.

You can learn more about the panel below. For additional information about PAA presentations, consult their website.

The Graduate Training Program of the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology (CSDE) is accepting applications from students looking to train in demography and qualify for the Graduate Certificate in Demographic Methods. The certificate program is the academic pathway to advanced interdisciplinary training in population science, in addition to discipline-based courses of study.

Application Process

1. Submit applications no later than April 1, 2017 (by 12 PM)
2. The application is in the form of an online WebQ survey and requires a UW NetID.
3. Register for the autumn quarter Population Proseminar (CSDE 502) and the spring CSDE weekly seminar (CSDE 501), if the required credits have not already been completed.

Program Value

Recognized and supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Development, the completion of the Certificate Program provides graduate students with credentials as a skilled demographer to position them in academic and applied job markets, and to succeed in research funding competitions. The Program is designed to enhance training beyond the requirements of a graduate degree. It provides a coherent body of study in demography, enhanced mentored research experiences, and the following benefits:

• Access to CSDE’s significant research support services (computing, research consultations, workshops, a biodemography lab and equipment, and more)
• Assistance in matching students with CSDE Faculty Affiliate mentors and potential research collaborators
• Training, research experience, and curriculum to prepare trainees for meeting the evaluative criteria—including all required courses—of the CSDE Fellowship application
• Financial support (when available) for travel to present research at the Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America

The program can be completed in 2 years while concurrently pursuing a graduate degree in any department. Graduate certificates are recorded on your official transcript, and acknowledged with a plaque.

Curriculum

The Certificate Program curriculum consists of five elements:

1. Required core courses on the substance and methods of demography
   • SOC/CSDE 513: Demography & Ecology (3 credits, 1 quarter)
   • SOC/CSDE 533: Demographic Methods (3 credits, 1 quarter)
2. A broad array of elective courses in multiple disciplines
3. Professional development in the field through a Proseminar and mentoring
   • CSDE 502: Population Studies Proseminar (1 credit in Fall quarter & 2 credits in Winter and Spring quarters, for a total of 5 credits)
4. The CSDE Weekly Seminar Series, which meets on Fridays 12:30-1:30, and features presentations of current research in demography.
   • CSDE 501:  1 credit for 6 quarters, total of 6 credits
   • The schedule for 2016-2017 is here.
5. Research mentoring

Visit the CSDE Training webpage for more details on the Demographic Methods Graduate Certificate Program.

Questions? Email the Assistant Director of Training, Aimée Dechter.

Adrian Raftery, CSDE Affiliate and Blumstein-Jordan Professor of Statistics and Sociology at UW, recently received the St. Patrick’s Day Medal from Science Foundation Ireland for his abundant contributions to statistics. Raftery, born in Dublin, has devoted his extensive academic career to developing new statistical methodology, paying particular attention to the social and biological sciences. According to a statement from the foundation, recipients like Raftery “have demonstrated how academic and industry based scientific research can create jobs, tackle global problems and impact positively on people and society” and “are driving globally significant innovation in the areas of agriculture, food production, health, and population and weather forecasting.”

Congratulations, Adrian, on this well-deserved honor!

Thanks for joining us last Friday for our last seminar of the quarter! Our Trainees showcased the breadth and depth of their current demography research, and we’re excited to see where those projects carry them in the coming months. Special congratulations to Michelle O’Brien and Charles Lanfear for receiving Best Poster designations! You can see posters from the event on our archive page.

The Seminar Series will resume in Spring Quarter. Stay tuned for updates!