Weekly News – February 13, 2017

EVENTS
Wednesday, Feb 15, 12-1:10 PM. Elizabeth Root (Ohio State University), Local Context and the Effectiveness of Health Systems Decentralization in Rural Honduras: Evidence for Improved Child Health?” Refreshments and cookies served. 2232 Piedmont Ave. Brown Bag talks are recorded and posted on the Berkeley Population Sciences vimeo channel, https://vimeo.com/berkeleypopscience.

Tuesday, Feb 14, 3:30-5 PM. “Ambivalent Kinship and the Production of Wellbeing: the Social Dynamics of Health Among Women in Indian Slums,” with Claire Snell-Rood, SPH. Wildavsky Conference Room, 2538 Channing Way, ISSI.

Thursday, Feb 16, 2-3:30 PM. “Leisure Luxuries and the Labor Supply of Young Men” with Erik Hurst, Chicago Booth | 648 Evans Hall

Thursday, Feb 16, 4-6 PM. Williamson Seminar on Institutional Analysis: “Up from Poverty? The 1832 Cherokee Land Lottery and the Long-Run Distribution of Wealth” with Joseph Ferrie, Northwestern University Haas School of Business, C325 Cheit Hall.

SAVE THE DATE
February 27, 2017 Comparative Workshop on Adult Mortality Determinants: “Adult Mortality Determinants in Low and Middle Income Countries and Comparisons with High Income Countries.” This one-day workshop is designed to share leading research methods and findings on comparative patterns of adult mortality risk factors in low and middle income countries (LMIC), following-up on an inaugural workshop held on this topic at USC in February 2016. The goal is to build a robust evidence base for understanding the drivers of cross-national mortality and health expectancy patterns, especially in populations with unusually high or low adult mortality. The newly expanded availability of longitudinal HRS-type surveys in LMIC make this an opportune time to gather a network of researchers using such data to study mortality patterns, in order to share innovative methods, new results, and ideas for the most promising research agenda going forward.. It is co-sponsored by the UC-Berkeley Center on the Economics and Demography of Aging-CEDA (William Dow), and the USC/UCLA Center for Biodemography and Population Health (Eileen Crimmins and Teresa Seeman). Lunch and refreshments will be served. Attendance is free and open to the public and the university community, but seating is limited. If interested in joining, RSVP no later than February 10th, to Liz Vasile (evasile@berkeley.edu).

Thursday, March 2, 2017 – 2:30pm to 6:30pm “Research That Gets Results: A Symposium on Science-Driven Policy Change” Byers Auditorium at Genentech Hall. Through two moderated panels, Bixby Center researchers will share their experiences producing science that has shaped reproductive health policy in significant ways. Panelists will represent a diversity of disciplines and will discuss how their research has influenced institutions, from courts and legislatures to government agencies, both here and abroad. Confirmed speakers include Drs. Dan Grossman, Craig Cohen, Ann Keller and Uta Landy – full list forthcoming. This event aims to foster conversations relevant to a wide range of scientific fields and policy arenas in women’s health. Guests are encouraged to join us for a reception following the event to build community, share knowledge and enjoy refreshments. Event Schedule:
• 2:30-4:30pm: Panel Discussions and Q&A
• 4:30-6:30pm: Reception
Please register by February 23 at http://bixbycenter.ucsf.edu/symposium.

ANNOUNCEMENTS
Help Support Federal Data! C2ER (Council for Community and Economic Research) is sharing a letter to Congress that describes the value of federal statistics to our work and emphasizes our support for federal data that guides private investments, state and local decision making, and the proper functioning of our democracy. If you agree with the content of this letter, please sign up here and they will add your name, title, and organizational affiliation to the growing list of organizations that share concerns about the future of federal statistics. (Note: The San Francisco Chronicle reportedSaturday that a website featuring resources for children with disabilities has been removed from the Department of Education website.)

FUNDING.
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation: Seeking Evidence for How Policy Can Improve Health. $2 million in research funding is available to non-profit or public research institutions that can build an evidence base for how policies, laws, and guidelines can help everyone live a healthier life. For more information visit here.

WORKSHOPS
SPACE Workshop for Estimating Health Expectancy, sponsored by CEDA, which will be held on Sunday, February 26 in the Demography House seminar room. Information is in the message below.
As described on the CDC site: “The SPACE (Stochastic Population Analysis for Complex Events) program is a collection of PC SAS® programs to estimate multi-state life table (MSLT) functions via microsimulation, and their sampling variability via a special bootstrap approach. This program offers a versatile statistical tool for researchers interested in modeling multiple and recurrent events using longitudinal survey data. Its development and applications is described in detail in a recent paper (Cai et al. 2010).” http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data_access/space.htm.
Related information on using SPACE for estimating health expectancy can be found in Nihon University Professor Yasuhiko Saito’s 2014 paper “The methods and materials of health expectancy,” Statistical Journal of the IAOS 30 (2014) 209–223: http://content.iospress.com/download/statistical-journal-of-the-iaos/sji00840?id=statistical-journal-of-the-iaos%2Fsji00840.
Professor Saito and others will lead this 1-day workshop that will cover:
1. Introduction to SPACE
2. Using sample data to run SPACE
3. How to run microsimulations with SPACE
4. Using your own data to run SPACE
Please bring a laptop with SAS installed (including BASE, STAT, and IML). Lunch and refreshments will be served. Attendance is free but seating is limited. The deadline to RSVP is February 10. Please RSVP by sending an email to Liz Vasile (evasile@berkeley.edu).

ICPSR Workshops at Berkeley and Summer Program. The Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research is holding several summer workshops at UC Berkeley including Survival Analysis, Event History Modeling, and Duration Analysis, Bayesian Multilevel Models, and Latent Class Analysis in Social Science Research. Plus, check out ICPSR’s Summer Program at the University of Michigan.

Grant Writing Workshops – Sponsored by SPH.
Feb 14 | 12:30pm-1:30pm | (Room TBD)
Drinking from a firehouse: Understanding NIH – Webinar with Rosemarie Hunziker, NIH.

Event Contact: lhg@berkeley.edu. RSVP here. The link to the WebEx connection will be sent next week for those who would like to access the webinar remotely. We will share the powerpoint slides after the webinar.

D-LAB
Upcoming workshops include machine learning, R, and Python. Dlab sponsors workshops and training in courses, one-on-one consulting for faculty, grad students and undergraduates, and working groups of focuses topics. For more information and registration, visit http://dlab.berkeley.edu.

JOBS
All jobs and postdoctoral fellowships are posted as we receive them on the Demography Department Jobs Listserv, http://lists.demog.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/jobs. This list advertises positions of all sorts relevant for social and behavioral scientists with advanced degrees.