This week we give a warm welcome to Audrey Dorélien, Associate Professor of the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, to give a talk at our brownbag seminar on Wednesday, November 15, at 12pm PST. Audrey will present her research on “Using Remotely Sensed Data to Study in Utero Health Shocks in Sub-Saharan Africa.” 310 Social Sciences Building. Zoom option. Meeting ID: 913 4861 2599 Passcode: 937834.
Read the abstract for her talk as well as more about Audrey below. Please do join us, and share this event with other colleagues who may be interested.
Biography:
Audrey Dorélien is an Associate Professor and McKnight Presidential Fellow at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota (UMN). At UMN, she is also a faculty affiliate in the Applied Economics Department, the School of Public Health, and the Minnesota Population Center, where she currently serves as the Co-Director of the Population Training Program. Prior to joining the Humphrey School faculty, she was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar at the University of Michigan’s Population Studies Center and Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health. She earned her PhD in Public Policy from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs with a concentration in demography from the Office of Population Research. Professor Dorélien’s research agenda strives to elucidate how human population dynamics and behavior intersect with environmental conditions to affect health. Her work describes demographic and health patterns and attempts to identify causal factors responsible for these patterns. The first strand of her research focuses on the effects of early life exposures (i.e., disease/nutrition/climate) on health both in the United States and in Sub-Saharan Africa. Second, she analyzes how human behavior and population dynamics affect the spread and severity of infectious diseases. Third, Professor Dorélien has conducted research on spatial demography/ urbanization with a focus on health and climate change vulnerability. Her research has appeared in Demography, Population Development Review, Population and Environment, Population Health Metrics, Biodemography and Social Biology, Demographic Research, and PLoS ONE.
Abstract:
In this presentation I provide an overview of my research agenda specifically highlighting my work on climate change and maternal/child health. The core of my presentation will focus on a paper in which we use detailed reproductive data in combination with fine-scale climate data to examine pregnancy outcomes among women in sub-Saharan Africa, a region that is home to some of the poorest families in the world. Fine-scale precipitation and temperature data allow each pregnancy to be matched to the relevant climate exposures. We analyze retrospective pregnancy data from over 65,000 pregnancies recorded in 23 surveys across 15 African countries. We investigate the linkages between climate and pregnancy outcomes using linear probability models with fixed effects to minimize confounding due to factors that vary by location, season, and year. Our results indicate that fetal loss and birth weight are indeed impacted by exposure to hot days even after controlling for other individual-level characteristics. This research provides insight into the linkages between climate and a major health issue faced by women.
Wishing you a happy Diwali for those who celebrate.
See further announcements and opportunities below.
EVENTS
November 13 | 2-3:30pm | UC Berkeley Sociology | Jeff Lockhart, James S. McDonnell Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Chicago, in the Department of Sociology and the Knowledge Lab, will present “Because The Machine Can Discriminate: How Machine Learning Serves and Transforms Biological Explanations of Human Difference.” 402 Social Sciences Building and Zoom. Meeting ID: 968 5992 0616 Passcode: 484766
November 14 | 12:30pm | UC Berkeley Health Policy Colloquium Series | Becky Staiger, Assistant Professor Health Policy & Management, Berkeley Public Health. “The Impact of Abortion-Providing Clinic Closures on Women Enrolled in Medicaid.” Berkeley Way West Building, 5th Floor, Room 5401. Event details are here.
WORKSHOPS
The Centers on the Demography and Economics of Aging Coordinating Center (CC) at the University of Michigan is pleased to announce the availability of tuition awards for trainees and junior faculty to participate in the data training workshop Life History Data in the Health and Retirement Study to be held online December 4-6, 2023 from 10am-3pm ET each day. The workshop is intended to give participants an overview of the life history data resources in the Health & Retirement Study. Applications will be accepted through Thursday, November 30. See attached announcement for further details.
Annual Workshop on U.S. State Policies, Population Health, and Aging.
The 2024 Annual Workshop on U.S. State Policies, Population Health, and Aging will be held on May 21, 2024 in person at Syracuse University. The workshop is cosponsored by the Center for Aging and Policy Studies, funded by the National Institute on Aging (P30AG066583), and the Center for Policy Research at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.
Participants: The workshop is aimed at researchers who study, or are interested in studying, how U.S. state policies affect adult health. Advanced graduate students who are ABD, post-doctoral fellows, and early career researchers and faculty are encouraged to apply. We anticipate providing support for travel expenses (up to $2000) for ten Workshop Fellows.
Objectives: The objective of the workshop is to build the research capacity for examining how U.S. state contexts, and their changes in recent decades, have affected population health across the adult life course. This area of research can be challenging because it is interdisciplinary and requires unique data sources and complex analytic methods. To advance this area of research, the workshop has four aims: 1) foster collaborations among participants from multiple disciplines, 2) showcase methods for dealing with high-dimensional, highly correlated structure of data often needed to analyze the effects of state contexts on health, 3) teach a core type of statistical model for analyzing the effects of state contexts (this year’s focus is Mundlak regression), and 4) facilitate dissemination and translation of this research into policymaking.
Workshop Fellow Application Instructions: The application deadline is February 1, 2024. Before proceeding to the application site, please assemble the following materials into a single pdf: (1) current CV, (2) a one-page statement describing your overall research interests. Please highlight research that you have conducted, or plan to conduct, on the impact of U.S. states on health. Applicants will be notified by March 15, 2024. Any questions, email caps@syr.edu.
Statistics Korea (KOSTAT) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) are working together to enhance the field of demographic statistics by providing lectures to foster expertise in demography. We are delighted to rerun the “Fertility and Family” course during this winter, which is the same course that was part of the last Summer Seminar on Population. This course is open to professionals, researchers, and graduate students in Korea and internationally, specializing in related fields. For more information, please visit our website. The upcoming winter course is designed to address critical population-related issues on “Fertility and Family”. This specially repeated session will provide another platform for experts in demography and government officials responsible for population censuses and statistics worldwide.
Starts: Nov 27, 2023 09:00 (KST)
Ends: Nov 30, 2023 17:00 (KST)
Online Instructions:
Url: http://intpopstat.kr/seminar/01_2_check.php
Login: Register in advance online
CONFERENCE
Abstract submissions are now open for the 2024 Data-Intensive Research Conference. The conference will be held July 31-August 1 in Minneapolis, MN. The 2024 conference theme is Harnessing the Power of Linked Data to Study Aging. We will showcase research that leverage large-scale population data with a linking component to examine aging and life course processes in the U.S. and global contexts. Submit an abstract and review the call for proposals.
FUNDING
Notice of Special Interest (NOSI): Interventions to promote mental well-being in populations that experience health disparities through social, cultural, and environmental connectedness. NOT-OD-23-194. The Office of Disease Prevention (ODP) and participating National Institutes of Health (NIH) Institutes, Centers, and Offices (ICOs) are soliciting intervention projects to promote mental well-being and/or prevent mental health problems by fostering social, cultural, or environmental connectedness in one or more populations that experience health disparities. Mental health or mental wellness may be the primary outcome of the intervention and/or an intermediate factor to improve other health outcomes.
Populations that experience Health Disparities (HD Populations): Populations defined in section 464z-3(d)(1) of the Public Health Service Act, 42 U.S.C. 285t(d)(1) as “health disparity populations” based on higher overall rates of disease incidence, prevalence, morbidity, mortality, or survival rates in the population as compared to the health status of the general population. NIH-designated U.S. health disparity populations currently include Black Americans and African Americans, Hispanics and Latinos, American Indians and Alaska Natives, Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders, socioeconomically disadvantaged populations, underserved rural populations, sexual and gender minorities, and people living with disabilities.
Release Date: November 6, 2023. First Available Due Date: February 05, 2024. Expiration Date:
September 08, 2026.
MiCDA Pilot Grant Competition-Demography of Family Caregiving Network, 2024-2025.The Michigan Center on the Demography of Aging (MiCDA) announces a pilot project competition for early career faculty working in conjunction with Demography of Family Caregiving Network members. This network studies the implications of changes in the demography of families for caregiving and the wellbeing of older adults and their caregivers. These projects are designed to foster new cross-rank cross-institution collaborations among network members. In 2024, MiCDA expects to make 1-2 awards.
Eligibility
Early-career scholars, including those not already affiliated with the network, may apply in collaboration with a senior network member affiliated with another institution. Biographical information for network members is available at https://micda.isr.umich.edu/networks/demography-of-family-caregiving/people/
Pre-proposals are required
To be considered for a full proposal, please submit a pre-proposal through the online application, https://micda.isr.umich.edu/programs/2024-micda-pre-proposal/. Pre-proposals are due by Friday, December 15.
Budget
Projects will be supported for 1 year, from July 1, 2023-June 30, 2024. Applicants may request up to $35,000 in direct costs. For detailed information on the required components and deadlines for proposals, please see the attached full announcement. Please direct questions to Jana Deatrick (jlbruce@umich.edu).
RELATED LISTS
Jobs
All jobs and postdoctoral fellowships are posted as we receive them on the Demography Department Jobs Listserv, http://lists.demog.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/jobs. This list advertises positions of all sorts relevant for social and behavioral scientists with advanced degrees.
Migration Mailing List
Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative (BIMI.berkeley.edu) is a research center for the study of immigrants and immigration. BIMI has a mailing list which is where a good deal of immigration and migration announcements are posted, and only some of that material is posted on the PopSciences Weekly News. Sign up for it with this link.
School of Public Health Mailing List
Tue$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.