When: Friday, October 24, 2025 at 12:30 pm

Where: 360 Parrington Hall and on Zoom

We are looking forward to hosting CSDE Affiliate Morgan Vickers from the University of Washington on Friday, October 24 in Parrington Hall 360 and on Zoom. This seminar is co-sponsored by the Population Health Initiative.

In 1895, South Carolina produced its post-Reconstruction Constitution, a document explicitly designed to disenfranchise Black South Carolinians through the implementation of restrictive voting laws, the invention of new counties, and the redefinition of a "person" to only include white men. Just five years later, in 1900, the State passed its First Amendment, which legally mandated the condemnation and drainage of all swamplands in the State, ecological spaces most commonly inhabited by poor Black people. The drainage effort was spearheaded by a man named James Cosgrove, the self-proclaimed "Apostle of Drainage in the South," who argued that "no longer will we permit our lands to remain in a condition fit for habitation only by the negro," and, instead, it was the project of the turn-of-the-century State to "make our waste places the fairest and dearest spot in all the world, [a] fit dwelling place for the white man." This paper centers around a key chapter in my forthcoming manuscript, Wretched: Damned Swamps, Black Haunts, and the Draining of the Lowcountry, 1865-1945, which highlights the racial ecologies of Cosgrove's Sanitary and Drainage Commission between 1895 and 1915. I demonstrate how the constitutionalization of Black damnation and the codification of ecocide worked in tandem to transform the racial, spatial, and political condition of South Carolina, with lasting impacts on our present world.

CSDE Affiliate India Ornelas (Health Systems and Population Health), CSDE External Affiliate Amy Bailey (Illinois), and CSDE External Affiliate Hedy Lee (Duke) recently co-authored an essay in the American Journal of Public Health that makes the case for building a powerful coalition to advance health equity through attention to power and overcoming structural constraints.  

CSDE Trainee Natalie Turner and co-author Carli Friedman recently authored a study, titled “Examining Cross-State Differences in Self Directed Services Provided Through 1915(c) Waivers for Older Adults”, published in the Journal of Aging & Social Policy. Self-Direction is a service delivery model that allows older adults to select their services and who provides them. This mixed-method study identifies cross-state differences in how states are allowing Self-Direction among the 60 Medicaid Home and Community-Based Services (HCBS) 1915(c) waivers that serve older adults using Framework Analysis and descriptive statistics.

CSDE Affiliate Clara Berridge (Social Work) published a forum article in The Gerontologist with USCF’s Anita Ho, titled “Why AI Governance Should Be a Focal Issue for Gerontology”. Drawing on that work, Berridge spoke about the importance of protecting privacy for older adults and applying a sociotechnical perspective as a panelist for a National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine’s (NASEM) Hauser Policy Impact Fund Webinar series, “From Longevity to Vitality: Leveraging Technology for Thriving in Later Life.” The webinar can be viewed here.

CSDE External Affiliate Salene Jones (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center) and co-authors recently published an article in Population Health Management. In breast cancer, clinicians add data on social support to patient electronic health records (EHRs) often in free text notes, but those data may be challenging to use for population health initiatives or research purposes. Jones and co-authors evaluated different methods of creating the total score for EHR-Support forming the basis for a tool that can be used in population health research and management.

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CSDE Affiliate Edmund Seto (Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences) and co-authors recently published an article in the Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health,  titled, “Accessibility To Ethnic Food Stores Authorized by the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) in Washington State.” Lead author and recent UW MPH graduate, Kana Ogaki and her advisor Dr. Pia Chaparro, who is Assistant Professor in Health Systems and Population Health assessed the availability and distribution of WIC-authorized ethnic stores in WA.

Announcing CSDE’s Autumn 2025 Lightning Talks and Poster Session! Applications are currently open for graduate students to present their research and receive feedback at this event, and we would love to receive your submission! This is an excellent, low-stakes opportunity to practice your presentation skills, grow your network, and prepare for upcoming conferences.If you are interested, apply here.

Each quarter, CSDE offers 3-5 workshops on data sources, statistical and biomarker methodology, introductions to analysis programs, and more, all given by CSDE staff and faculty affiliates. These workshops can include hands-on training in novel methods and programming, lectures on innovative data sources, and discussions of important issues in research and data collection. Over the coming academic year, CSDE will offer a diverse and exciting set of workshops in a remote format. 

• Text As Data
  • Date & Time: Tuesday, Oct. 21 @ 10:00AM–12:00PM
  • Instructor: June Yang
• Intro to R I: Objects & Programming
  • Date & Time: Thursday, Oct. 23 @ 10:00AM–11:30AM
  • Instructor: Deven Hamilton
• Intro to R II: Working With Data
  • Date & Time: Thursday, Nov. 6 @ 10:00AM–11:30AM
  • Instructor: June Yang

Sponsor: Retirement Research Foundation (RRF)

Award amount: $150,000 (most awards average $100,000 to $200,000)

Number of applications UW can put forward: 1 per department. 

OSP deadline: 10/28/2025 is the 3-day deadline

Sponsor deadline: 11/1/2025 for LOI

Program Description: The Retirement Research Foundation (RRF) funds research that seeks to identify interventions, policies and practices to improve the well-being of older adults and/or their caregivers.

IPUMS HEALTH SURVEYS

IPUMS MEPS now offers data from the 2023 MEPS sample. This release includes 1,100 variables from the Full Year Consolidated, Condition, Event, Prescribed Medicine, Appendix to the Event, and Pooled Variance files. New variables added with this release include information about COVID and Long COVID at the round level.

IPUMS CPS

The USDA, which sponsors the CPS Food Security supplement, recently indicated they will terminate data collection for the supplement. Learn about how food security data in the CPS compares to other federal sources on our blog. The Population Association of America (PAA) has written a letter about the termination of the supplement. Individuals can sign onto the PAA letter through this Wednesday, October 22.

If you have a data set that is really important for you and has valuable impact more generally, then consider telling your story to Essential Data U.S. (https://essentialdata.us/). They are seeking to build a compendium of cases that convey compelling real-world examples of how federal data can benefit the American people and economy. Your story will help data users and advocates be more effective when engaging with lawmakers and federal agencies for continued resourcing of federal data programs.  

The Centre for Migration Studies at University of British Columbia has just posted materials from a September conference on Narrative and Computational Text Analysis for research on migration and citizenship. The materials are relevant to anyone who is relatively new to computation text analysis and curious to learn more. You can download the materials from the workshop here. 

The Population Research Center at Portland State University, directed by CSDE External Affiliate Ethan Sharygin (Portland State University), has published a resource guide for finding federal data during the shutdown.  These sources include Census Reporter, Esri, PolicyMap, IPUMS, NHGIS, and the Data Rescue Project Portal.

The Mobility and Migration Modeling Intercomparison Project (3MIP) invites you to join a new initiative to advance the modeling of migration and mobility in the context of climate change.

Over the past decades, migration modeling capacity has expanded considerably, with diverse approaches including ABM, IAM, Gravity, Radiation, and others. Similar to how model intercomparison projects (MIPs) such as AgMIP and ISIMIP have strengthened agricultural and climate modeling, 3MIP aims to improve the robustness, comparability, and usability of migration models. By standardizing methods, characterizing uncertainties, and setting shared benchmarks, we hope to build a foundation for stronger science and policy applications.

Social researchers are invited to join a global community of scholars, educators, and practitioners dedicated to advancing research and practice on work, family, and well-being. You can learn more about the WFRN at this link: https://wfrn.org/. Their upcoming conference will focus on caregiving across the life course. More about the 2026 conference can be found at this link. 

The electoral successes of anti-democratic movements cannot be explained solely by the demographic or socio-economic characteristics of individual groups. More decisive are local perceptions of problems and narratives of loss in the context of demographic change. These manifest in a perceived political overload, blame and the supposed failure of ‘established’ politics.

The UW Office of Research invites applications from UW researchers for the inaugural Research Impact Advocates cohort in 2025–26. This program will provide training, engagement opportunities, and community for up to 20 UW researchers interested in increasing their capacity to engage public audiences about their research findings and expertise. Learn more about the program and how to apply by the November 1 deadline.

The third Call for Letters of Interest (LOI) for a training opportunity at the Washington Learning Health System Embedded Scientist Training and Research (LHS E-STAR) Center. This third and final round of scholars will conduct research projects at Community Health Association of Spokane and HealthPoint. Learn more about the E-STAR Center on their website: Applications :: ACT Center (act-center.org)

We encourage you to share the instructions for the LOI with early career faculty and postdocs who may be interested in this exciting opportunity. 

The Netherlands Demographic Society (NVD) invites you to join the 18th edition of the Dutch Demography Day on Wednesday February 4, 2026 in the Academy Building of Utrecht University (Domplein).

At the conference, the most recent findings in the field of population studies will be presented, including family and fertility, migrants and migration, health, mortality and longevity, population ageing, population growth and decline, and urbanization. The scientific programme comprises a Keynote Address, several rounds of parallel sessions and a poster session.

The conference will be held in hybrid format.

Migration is a highly debated yet divisive topic in today’s public and policy discourse. In low fertility societies, migration is the main driver of population change and is essential for maintaining a stable labour force. Although it is often presented in simplistic terms, migration is a complex phenomenon shaped by the interplay of multiple drivers and barriers.

The University of Washington Research and Engagement on Adaptation for Climate and Health (REACH) Center is accepting applications to the Implementation and Evaluation Fellowship until November 28. The Fellowship provides teams of fellows with $60,000 of funding and training to conduct an implementation science project to evaluate or improve the uptake of a climate and health-related project or program.

Fellows apply and participate as teams of 2-3 public health or healthcare practitioners and researchers.

The Latino Center for Health (LCH) at the University of Washington invites applications to the LCH’s Small Grants Program, a $20,000 grant to fund research focused on Latinx health in Washington state. The theme for the 2026-2027 program is Immigrant Health in a Changing Policy and Practice Landscape. Applicants should include a partnership between a UW investigator and a community-based organization that serves Latinx individuals, families, or communities. Applications are due on December 15.

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Data from the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) along with other recent data releases are now available through a special CIESIN subcollection of the CAFE collection on the Harvard Dataverse. CAFE is the Research Coordinating Center for Health and Extreme Weather, based at Boston University School of Public Health and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The spatial data produced or curated by SEDAC were specifically intended to facilitate integration with gridded Earth science data.

Dr. Melanie Martin is looking for a graduate student collaborator(s) to help with a year-long community-based participatory research project based in a local Lake City elementary school to study the impacts of culturally sustaining and asset-based pedagogical approaches in early education.

Dewey Data is a research platform that provides access to third-party datasets across a variety of data categories including foot traffic, construction permits, healthcare, workforce, consumer behavior, and transportation.

University of Washington faculty, students, and researchers are eligible for access and must register an individual account. Follow this link to learn about how to register.

We invite early career faculty affiliates to join our new mailing list, csde_earlycareer. Among other things, this is the way to find out info about our quarterly Early Career Affiliate happy hours, and you won’t want to miss those! These will be a great way to meet up with other junior scholars in a fun and casual atmosphere over snacks and drinks. Who counts as early career, you ask? Typically we mean folks who are pre-promotion (i.e.