The Berkeley Population Center and the Department of Demography is now accepting applications for the 9th Annual Workshop on Formal Demography (WFD). Lead instructors this year are Josh Goldstein, Dennis Feehan, and Robert Chung. The Workshop will take place from June 5-9, 2023 at the UC Berkeley campus. The focus this year is on fertility, including contemporary topics like Covid-19 and abortion policy. The WFD is open to advanced graduate students, post-docs, and early-career researchers and faculty. Grant support will fund accepted trainees. Learn more and apply here. 

Our next Brown Bag Talk of the semester is this Wednesday, March 8th, at 12pm, with Martin Eiermann, who will present, “Racial Disparities in Mortality During the 1918 Influenza Pandemic.” Martin, a postdoctoral fellow in the Sociology Department at Duke University, will present in person at 310 Social Sciences Building. Zoom link here.  Meeting ID: 960 6550 7453 Password: DEMOG_BB. Upcoming seminars are located here. Video recordings of past presentations can be viewed at the Population Sciences at Berkeley YouTube Channel.

The NIH has announced a Request for Information (RFI) inviting the research community to give input on the state of postdoctoral research training and career progression infrastructure in biomedical science developed by a working group of the NIH Advisory Committee to the Director. The RFI is open through April 14, 2023.

In support of the RFI, NIH is hosting a series of listening sessions to hear from the community about their experiences as postdoctoral trainees and perspectives on the current infrastructure. Additionally, NIH is interested in hearing potential promising solutions to the fundamental challenges faced by the postdoctoral trainee community. Each listening sessions will focus on a specific theme:

• Wednesday, March 8, 12:30 – 1:30 p.m. ET: Role, duration, structure, and value of the academic postdoc, including the effects on underrepresented populations.
• Friday, March 10, 1:30 – 2:30 p.m. ET: International trainee concerns.
• Friday, March 17, 12:30 – 1:30 p.m. ET: Compensation and benefits, including childcare and dependent care.
• Monday, March 20, 1:30 – 2:30 p.m. ET: Job security, career prospects, and quality of life.

Interested participants may register here.

See further announcements and opportunities below.

EVENTS

March 7 | 12:10pm |  UC Berkeley School of Public Health | Latest in Public Health Research Series | Alex Budak, Berkeley Haas professional faculty member, will present “Becoming a Changemaker.” Register in advance for the series here. See full slate of talks. 

March 8  | 12-1:10pm | UC Berkeley Demography Brown Bag Colloquium | Martin Eiermann, Postdoctoral Fellow, Sociology, Duke University, will present, “Racial Disparities in Mortality During the 1918 Influenza Pandemic.” In person talk, 310 Social Sciences Building. Zoom link here.  Meeting ID: 960 6550 7453 Password: DEMOG_BB. 

CONFERENCES, WORKSHOPS, MEETINGS

Demographers of Color announce their event, “Navigating PAA and Historically-White Academic Conferences as DoC: A Conversation with Demographers of Color,” to be held this Friday, March 2023, 10am-11:30am PST. DoC seek to create safe spaces for scholars of all stages in the academic life cycle, especially those who identify as URM & DoC. All are welcome. We operate with a broad conceptualization of population sciences where researchers of all disciplines are welcome. We are building a broad community of DoC + allies to support ourselves and the generations rising. We acknowledge the systems of oppression in which we live and work, our privileged positions within, and our enduring hopes of and work for transformation.  For more information and to register, see here. To join the mailing list, participate in the group, future events, or to learn more, please reach out to Mao-Mei Liu (website). 

Course on Matrix Approaches to Modelling Kinship at MPIDR. The Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) will be offering an open course on Matrix Approaches to Modelling Kinship (3-12 May 2023) and encourages qualified candidates to apply. Instructors are Diego Alburez-Gutierrez, Hal Caswell and Ivan Williams. This two-part course presents the theory underlying new matrix approaches to the formal demography of kinship networks. The first part of the course introduces the matrix formulation of demographic analyses, while the second part focuses on matrix kinship models that describe the development of the network of kin around a focal individual as it ages from birth. Learn more and apply.

NIH Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Program. The NIH Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Program will host a two-day virtual workshop on March 16-17, 2023 to identify principles and best practices to ethically and feasibly return individual research results to participants in large-sample studies that include pregnant women and children. Virtual attendance is open to the public. Registration is free, but required.

Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) Data User Workshop. Instructors are Noura Insolera, Paula Fomby, University of Michigan. Dates: June 12-16th, 2023. The Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), begun in 1968, is the world’s longest-running multigenerational household panel study. It is used to investigate scientific and policy questions about life course trajectories in health and well-being, intergenerational social and economic mobility, income and wealth inequality, family investments in children, neighborhood effects on opportunity and achievement, and many other topics. This five-day workshop will orient participants to the content and structure of the core PSID interview, its special topics modules, and its supplemental studies, including the Child Development Supplement (CDS), the Transition into Adulthood Supplement (TAS), and the 2013 Rosters and Transfers Module. In addition we will discuss topics including the recently-released genomics data collected from children and primary caregivers in CDS as well as new data files which explain family relationships and demographic characteristics over time. Read the full workshop description here.

The Russell Sage Foundation staff will discuss the foundation’s programs and the application process at a webinar on April 3, 2023, at 2PM ET. Register for the webinar.

With support from the National Institute of Aging, the Center for Demography of Health and Aging and Initiative in Social Genomics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is hosting The Advances in Social Genomics Conference Series (TAGC). The goal of this conference is to showcase scholarship that considers biodemographic factors across the life course that shape health and aging processes. The two-day conference will include a three-hour training workshop focused on the All of Us data and applications, a keynote presentation, and a set of paper presentations.  Researchers from any of the biological or social sciences are encouraged to participate. There is no conference registration fee. Funding is available for travel and accommodations of selected papers. To be considered for this conference, please submit a complete paper, a working draft, or an extended abstract (including data description, methods, and preliminary results) as a .pdf file here by March 15, 2023.

The Center to Accelerate Population Research in Alzheimer’s (CAPRA) at the University of Michigan is partnering with the Gateway to Global Aging Data (at USC) on a conference focusing on long-term care (LTC) policy and its impact on people and communities. The conference will be held November 7-8, 2023 in Washington, DC. Abstracts are due March 31, 2023. 

2023 Federal Committee on Statistical Methodology (FCSM) Research & Policy Conference. The 2023 FCSM Research and Policy Conference, to be held on October 24-26, 2023, in Baltimore, MD, provides a forum for experts and practitioners from around the world to discuss and exchange current methodological knowledge and policy insights about topics of current and critical importance to federal agencies. FCSM Research and Policy Conference seeks abstracts that address advances in credible and accurate survey and statistical methodologies from both research and policy perspectives. Abstracts should be limited to 200 words and are due April 3. Read more and submit here.

WEBINARS

Considering Racial, Ethnic, and Gender Differences When Studying Resilience.

A Research Centers Collaborative Network (of the NIA) Webinar. A person’s physical and psychological resilience is often thought to underlie their response to acute and chronic stressors. All of the National Institute on Aging extramural research programs have funding opportunities for studying resilience. One area that transcends all of these announcements is the importance of considering resilience in the context of disparities. This webinar will focus on the importance of taking disparities into account when studying resilience. The session will feature presentations from researchers studying resilience across populations and interventions to promote resilience. The webinar speakers will discuss the following:

• NIA’s disparities framework and its application to the study of resilience
• Evaluating resilience measurements in a way that allows for better understanding of resilience in the context of health disparities
• Setting expectations for responsible use of resilience measures and data for the health of diverse populations
• Religion and spiritual coping as a source of resiliency

March 30, 2023. Learn more and register here.

IUSSP Webinar on “Declining Mortality and Multi-Morbidity at Death.” Its aim is to draw attention to the role played by multi-morbidity in current epidemiological profiles and mortality dynamics. March, 30th, 2023. Learn more and register here.

OPPORTUNITIES

The Health Policy Research Scholars (HPRS) with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is a four-year national leadership development program for full-time doctoral students from nonclinical, research-focused disciplines in which policy is a key lever for change (e.g., urban planning; political science; economics; anthropology; education; social work; sociology). The application deadline is March 15th. Read more and apply here.

Coming soon. The California Collaborative for Pandemic Recovery and Readiness Research (CPR³ ) has released two new priority research areas, and will open Requests for Proposals (RFPs) in the coming weeks. These new funding opportunities will be related to two priority topic areas:

• The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on social and economic outcomes (e.g., those related to household finances, housing/mobility, labor markets, etc.) and evaluation of policies/interventions designed to mitigate or stabilize these effects
• Behavior change to improve adherence to public health recommendations/policies and uptake of pandemic-related interventions, including public health communication strategies

The RFPs will be for 1-year grants of $100,000 to $300,000. Application requirements and processes will be similar to the previously released RFPs. See website for information on all of CPR³‘s priority research areas, the RFP application process, and the announcement of the two upcoming RFPs in March. For additional questions, please email cpr3@ucsf.edu.

Roger Herriot Award for Innovation in Federal Statistics. Nominations are sought for the 2023 Roger Herriot Award for Innovation in Federal Statistics. The award is intended to reflect the characteristics that marked Roger Herriot’s career including:

• Dedication to the issues of measurement;
• Improvements in the efficiency of data collection programs; and
• Improvements and use of statistical data for policy analysis.

Individuals or teams at all levels within Federal statistical agencies, other government organizations, nonprofit organizations, the private sector, and the academic community may be nominated on the basis of their contributions. Nominations for the 2023 award will be accepted until April 14, 2023. Read more.

Request for Information on the NIH Plan to Enhance Public Access to the Results of NIH-Supported Research (NOT-OD-23-091). NIH seeks public input on the “NIH Plan to Enhance Public Access to the Results of NIH-Supported Research” (NIH Public Access Plan). NIH has a decades-long history of providing public access to scholarly publications and data resulting from the research it supports, including through the 2008 NIH Public Access Policy and the 2023 Data Management and Sharing Policy. In 2022, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released a memorandum on “Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research” that establishes new guidance for improving public access to scholarly publications and data resulting from Federally supported research. The NIH Public Access Plan outlines the proposed approach NIH will take to implement the new guidance, consistent with its longstanding commitment to public access. Respond by April 24, 2023. Read more here.

The 2023 ICPSR Summer Program in Quantitative Methods. Introductory to advanced training in statistics, data analysis, and quantitative research methods. This summer ICPSR will offer over 90 courses, workshops, and lectures in research methods, from statistics, measurement, and data analysis, to formal theory and qualitative analysis, and from introductory to advanced levels. Nearly all of our offerings this year are taught both in-person and online live-synchronously, and all are also recorded for asynchronous following/reviewing later. Recordings and other course material is available through December 2023. Registration is now open. Learn more.

Request for Information (RFI): Future Directions in Violence Against Women Research

Notice Number (NOT-NR-23-008). This Request for Information (RFI) is intended to gather public input on priority scientific directions in violence against women (VAW) research. This includes cisgender, transgender, and gender-diverse persons who identify as a woman or girl, as well as other individuals assigned female at birth but who may not identify as a woman or girl. Specifically, the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR), the Office of Research on Women’s Health (ORWH), the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD), the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR), the Office of Disease Prevention (ODP), and the Sexual & Gender Minority Research Office (SGMRO) are soliciting comments from the public on scientific gaps and research opportunities to address longstanding and emergent factors that perpetuate VAW. This request solicits input on a broad range of topics to inform research directions to better understand and identify opportunities to address underlying causes that influence women’s exposure to violence and to identify approaches to address the health impacts and sequelae of VAW.  In this request, VAW is considered broadly to include but not be limited to: domestic or intimate partner violence (IPV), sexual assault and rape, dating violence and abuse, peer violence, physical and mental abuse, sexual coercion, stalking, homicide, and elder mistreatment. Response date: March 31, 2023. Read more here.

WT Grant Foundation Scholars Program  The William T. Grant Scholars Program supports career development for promising early-career researchers. The program funds five-year research and mentoring plans that significantly expand researchers’ expertise in new disciplines, methods, and content areas. Applicants should have a track record of conducting high-quality research and an interest in pursuing a significant shift in their trajectories as researchers. We recognize that early-career researchers are rarely given incentives or support to take measured risks in their work, so this award includes a mentoring component, as well as a supportive academic community. Awards are based on applicants’ potential to become influential researchers, as well as their plans to expand their expertise in new and significant ways. The application should make a cohesive argument for how the applicant will expand his or her expertise. The research plan should evolve in conjunction with the development of new expertise, and the mentoring plan should describe how the proposed mentors will support applicants in acquiring that expertise. Proposed research plans must address questions that are relevant to policy and practice in the Foundation’s focus areas. Due July 5, 2023. Further information. 

FUNDING

Funding Opportunities from the Russell Sage Foundation. The Russell Sage Foundation has a number of funding opportunities for the year with upcoming deadlines, below or read about them here. RSF is hosting a webinar with details and a Q&A about the programs and best practices for applying for a RSF research award on April 3 at 2 PM ET. Register here.

Healthy Eating Research, a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is seeking evidence on policies and programs that improve access to nutritious food, nutrition security, and health outcomes. Up to $2.5 million is available for studies that focus on:

• Federal nutrition-assistance programs;
• Hunger-relief programs;
• Community-powered food programs; and
• Social and economic programs (nonfood policies).

Research can include strengthening existing programs, evaluating current policies, and testing new, innovative solutions that could have a real impact on improving nutrition equity and reducing disparities. Learn more about eligibility and application requirements. Apply by April 5, 2023. 

Burroughs Wellcome Fund: Climate Change and Human Health seed grant. The program aims to stimulate the growth of new connections between scholars working in largely disconnected fields who could change the course of climate change’s impact on human health. Funding: Up to $50K. Deadline is April 12, 2023. 

NIH

NIMHD Health Disparities Research Institute. August 7-11, 2023 in Bethesda, MD (in person). The HDRI aims to support the research career development of promising early-career minority health/health disparities research scientists and stimulate research in the disciplines supported by health disparities science. Applications will only be accepted from individuals who meet NIH’s early-stage investigator (ESI) eligibility criteria. Apply by March 13, 2023, HERE.

The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) is issuing NOT-HD-23-001: Notice of Special Interest (NOSI):  Mortality of Adolescents, Young Adults, and Other NICHD Priority Populations in the United States. Applications are invited to investigate:

• Identify mechanisms, causes, correlates, and modifiable risk factors underlying recent trends in mortality during adolescence and young adulthood. Trends to be examined include the growing inequalities in overall mortality and by cause of death and manner of death (natural, unintentional and intentional injuries, including suicide and homicide, and undetermined), with attention to race, ethnicity, sex, gender, age, disability status, as well as family structure and living arrangements, income, education, and geographic location.
• Examine trends in mortality among individuals with intellectual and physical disabilities with a particular interest in studies that identify mechanisms, explanations, and modifiable risk factors.
• Improve the accuracy and granularity of cause of death coding, especially for individuals with intellectual and physical disabilities, and to improve the accuracy of manner of death coding, particularly across unintentional and intentional injuries, including suicide and homicide, for adolescents and young adults as well as for individuals with intellectual and physical disabilities.
• Improve research on mortality among youth populations of all sexual orientations and gender identities –especially for suicide and homicide, and other intentional and unintentional injuries.
• Examine the impact of rising mortality among adolescents, adolescents transitioning to adulthood and young adults on the health and development of the population, including demographic factors such as fertility and nuptiality, on the health and development of decedents’ offspring and other family members, and on the health, development, and well-being of populations of interest to the NICHD is of high program priority.

The NICHD populations of interest that are the focus of this Notice are adolescents, young adults, and individuals with intellectual, developmental, or physical disabilities. For information on the NICHD Strategic Plan 2020: https://www.nichd.nih.gov/about/org/strategicplan

Notice of Funding Opportunity. RFA-AG-24-011 invites applications for research addressing the Role of Social and Behavioral Determinants of Health in Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and /AD-Related Dementia Etiology and Disparities. Letters of intent are due August 27, 2023. Applications due September 27, 2023. See RFA here.

Notice of Special Interest (NOSI): Research to Improve Pre-Pregnancy Care and Enhance Healthy Birth Intervals (NOT-HD-23-003) Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). The purpose of this Notice of Special Interest (NOSI) is to encourage research on the processes that facilitate or hinder the achievement of healthy interbirth intervals and promote healthy birth outcomes. Because short interbirth intervals are associated with a range of risk factors and poor maternal and child health outcomes, reducing the proportion of pregnancies conceived within 18 months of a previous pregnancy is a Healthy People 2030 objective. These negative outcomes include a lack of preconception health care, delayed prenatal care, preeclampsia, prematurity, low birth weight, infant mortality, and maternal morbidity and mortality. Short interbirth intervals may also reduce the duration of breastfeeding; conversely, the continuation of breastfeeding can contribute to the lengthening of interbirth intervals. This NOSI is intended to encourage collaboration among researchers across the social, behavioral, biomedical, and public health sciences to elucidate understanding of the modifiable factors behind barriers to enhancing birth intervals. First available due date: June 05, 2023. Read the full NOSI here. 

NIMHD Exploratory/Developmental Research Grant Program (R21 – Clinical Trial Optional)

https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PAR-23-111.html. NIMHD invites applications to support short-term exploratory or developmental research projects that have the potential to break new ground in the fields of minority health and/or health disparities or extend previous discoveries toward new directions or applications that can directly contribute to improving minority health and/or reducing health disparities in the U.S. Applications are due June 16, October 16, 2023, see here.

Interested in research on casual pathways and mechanisms through which social connectedness & isolation are associated with healthy aging? See three funding opportunities on Biopsychosocial Factors of Social Connectedness & Isolation on Health, Wellbeing, Illness, & Recovery. PAR-21-349 is an R01 Basic Experimental Studies with Humans. PAR-21-350 is an R01 where clinical trials are not allowed. PAR-21-352 is an R01 where clinical trials are required.

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Quetelet Journal has launched a call for papers about the demographic impacts of housing and crises. The expected papers will highlight the interactions between crisis and housing situations, both in the Northern and Southern contexts. More specifically, the proposed papers should analyse one of the following orientations:

1. The impact of housing conditions during health-related crises (specifically the Covid-19 crisis) on health and mortality, and on the evolution of social inequalities in health and mortality.
2. The impact of health, socioeconomic, environmental, and political crises on migration and by extension on housing change.
3. The impact of the war in Ukraine on the demand for emergency and permanent housing, as well as the living conditions of European populations following the rise in energy prices.

Articles must be submitted before May 1st 2023. Information concerning the submission is available on the Quetelet Journal website.

RELATED LISTS

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.

Migration Mailing List

Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative (BIMI.berkeley.edu) is a research center for the study of immigrants and immigration. BIMI has a mailing list which is where a good deal of immigration and migration announcements are posted, and only some of that material is posted on the PopSciences Weekly News. Sign up for it with this link.

School of Public Health Mailing List

Tue$day Top Tip$ for SPH Research is a listserv with research funding opportunities and other information pertinent to public health researchers who are not necessarily population researchers. To subscribe, write to Dr. Lauren Goldstein, lhg@berkeley.edu.