(This article has been deleted. Look for a clarification next week.)
CSDE 502 is a “how to” course that teaches skills for working with data. It is meant to fill a perceived curriculum gap between methods courses that emphasize study design, and statistics courses that teach statistical analysis. The course is useful for students about to embark on their first independent research project, as well as for those starting to work on a research team with other students or faculty. It focuses on applied methods for data preparation and will introduce the following topics: data management and documentation, data cleaning and variable creation, working with demographic data, and reproducibility. For more information, visit the link below.
If you are a new or veteran faculty member at UW, consider becoming a CSDE Affiliate. If you are a demographer and located in the Pacific Northwest, consider becoming an affiliate!
Affiliate applications are considered quarterly by CSDE’s Executive Committee. Once you are an affiliate, you can treat yourself and advance your scholarship with research consultations, computing accounts and software, grant support, and engagement from a productive community of scholars. The next CSDE Executive Committee meeting will be in early January. Send in your letter of application by the end of the year and be considered in the next review. Learn more about becoming an affiliate.
Alexes Harris, affiliate and Professor of Sociology, was quoted in an Atlanta Black Star article that addresses legal financial obligations (LFOs) that offenders must pay once they have served prison time, and the repercussions of failing to meet these obligations. One such repercussion is losing the right to vote, an outcome that disproportionately affects African-American offenders. In the article, Harris discusses various issues relating to LFOs, including how many obliged to pay them are not aware how failure to do so will affect their right to vote. For instance, Harris observed that in some cases, those who maintained voting rights because they kept up with their LFO obligations—which is the case in Washington—were not aware that they could vote. Furthermore, in the course of her research, Harris found that the LFO system is built on a history of racism. “Monetary sanctions were…integral to systems of criminal justice, debt bondage, and racial domination in the American South for decades,” she said. The full article is available below.
CSDE’s fellowship program supports and prepares promising early researchers for careers that will have a significant impact on the field of demography. Each year, CSDE awards several distinguished fellowships for predoctoral funding and additional mentoring. CSDE is pleased to offer two 12-month fellowships supported by the Shanahan Foundation that begin mid-September 2018.
Students have until Monday, December 11 (by 5 PM) to complete the online component of the application, and submit a copy of the online component along with the rest of their application materials to their department’s graduate program administrator. The department should submit a cover letter and the most competitive applications to CSDE by Friday, December 29 (by 5 PM).
The “Call for Applications” and CSDE fellowship application website provide detailed information about the application process.
Last Friday, eight CSDE trainees shared their work at CSDE’s Fall Lightning Talks and Poster Session, held in the Research Commons at Allen Library. Hailing from various departments–including Geography, Sociology, Social Work, and Statistics–each presented unique research that contributes to the field of population science.
At the conclusion of the event, CSDE Fellows Lee Fiorio and Connor Gilroy both received awards for best poster. Fiorio, a student in the Department of Geography, was recognized for his poster “Regularities in Mobility Patterns at Different Time Scales.” Gilroy, a student in the Department of Sociology, was recognized for his poster “Extending the Demography of Sexuality with Digital Trace Data.”
Contemporary families live in a world that is complex, increasingly interconnected, and culturally diverse. Families are affected by continuously evolving economic, technological, ideological, cultural, and political changes. In many areas, a decreasing fertility rate, the decline in household size, the aging population, and the sharp increase in the proportion of women entering the labor force have led to new and diverse family arrangements.
Despite these changes, families remain a central arena for promoting the well-being and resiliency of their members. The 2018 NCFR Annual Conference will focus on innovative approaches, theories, research, policies, and programs that support and strengthen families in all types of Western and non-Western settings. Of particular interest are proposals that focus on new lines of research and prevention and intervention approaches, programs, and policies that support vulnerable families.
The theme allows for a wide variety of topics, debates, and policy analyses. Find examples and more information about submitting your proposal at ncfr.org/ncfr-2018. The online proposal submission system will open in January 2018.
“Improving Access to HIV/AIDS Treatment for Pregnant Women in Africa: Applying Medical Anthropology in Global Heath”
Professor James Pfeiffer, Department of Global Health, Department of Anthropology
Abstract: Dr. Pfeiffer will describe a recently completed 4-year implementation science intervention study in Mozambique conducted with co-PI Dr. Rachel Chapman (also in the Department of Anthropology). The project was funded by the NICHD to develop and test a pilot intervention in six large public clinics in central Mozambique. The project sought to improve implementation of 2013 WHO “Option B+” guidelines to start antiretroviral treatment (ART) among pregnant women at time of HIV diagnosis in prenatal care. Mozambique is one of the poorest countries in the world and has among the highest HIV prevalence rates. Provision of ART to mothers for their own health and to prevent transmission of the HIV virus to their infants is one of Mozambique’s highest priorities for HIV programming. Data from Mozambique indicated substantial loss-to-follow-up (LTFU) in the first 3 months after ART initiation in prenatal care, meaning that a very high proportion of mothers stopped taking the medication that should in principle be continued for life. The use of anthropological methods to help design, measure, and evaluate an intervention to improve adherence and retention in HIV care of pregnant women and new mothers will be described and discussed. Dr. Pfeiffer will present intervention results from the study and reflect on the role of medical anthropology in applied global health.
Dr. James Pfeiffer, PhD, MPH, is Professor in the Department of Global Health in the School of Public Health, and holds a joint appointment in the Department of Anthropology, at the University of Washington. Dr. Pfeiffer has over twenty-five years of experiences conducting research in Africa. He has collaborated with Health Alliance International in projects targeting primary health care delivery and strengthening public health sectors. His expertise covers a wide range of topics, including HIV/AIDS, community participation, nutrition, reproduction, religion, global health, and medical anthropology. His work has been published in many journals, including Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Social Science & Medicine, the Annual Review of Anthropology, and The Lancet.
For more information about the MAGH lecture series, contact Marieke van Eijk (coordinator) at: mariev2@uw.edu