Carolina Population Center

Did We Botch the Notch? Investigating the Social Security Notch Literature and Use of the Health and Retirement Study
2019-03-01 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York)
On Friday, March 1, Jeremy Moulton, PhD, will present Did We Botch the Notch? Investigating the Social Security Notch Literature and Use of the Health and Retirement Study as part of the Carolina Population Center 2018-2019 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Moulton is an Associate Professor in the Department of Public Policy at UNC-Chapel Hill. His research investigates the intended and unintended consequences of public policy on labor supply, consumption, retirement, self-employment, real estate, and the intergenerational transmission of wealth and education.
Moulton is hosted by Carolina Population Center Fellow and Center Director Elizabeth Frankenberg. Frankenberg, Professor of Sociology, has served as the Director of Carolina Population Center since 2017.
Friday, Mar 1
12-1
Carolina Square Room 2002
123 West Franklin Street
Location information is here.
PRESENTATION ABSTRACT
The Social Security Amendments of 1972 and 1977, often referred to as the “Social Security Notch,” have been exploited as a natural experiment by researchers across numerous literatures to estimate causal relationships between income and an array of different outcomes. In this paper, we investigate whether a demographic or sampling shift potentially confounds results from Notch papers that use the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a popular data source for many of these studies. Specifically, we find a large discontinuous shift in the proportion of non-white respondents in the HRS starting with the 1917 birth cohort (i.e., those adversely affected by the Social Security Amendments), which we conclude is due to sampling problems in the HRS. To determine whether this confounds key results in the literature, we replicate three papers with different empirical approaches that used the HRS in their analysis of the Social Security Notch (Moulton, 2017; Goda et al, 2010; and Moran and Simon, 2006) and test the extent to which the results hold after accounting for the sampling issue. Overall, the results imply that the Social Security Notch literature and other work using the HRS data should carefully consider this issue.

Labor Supply and a Temporary Reprieve from Deportation: Evidence from the DACA Program
2019-03-22 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York)
On Friday, March 22, Joaquin Alfredo-Angel Rubalcaba, PhD, will present Labor Supply and a Temporary Reprieve from Deportation: Evidence from the DACA Program as part of the Carolina Population Center 2018-2019 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar series.
Rubalcaba is an assistant professor in the Department of Public Policy at UNC-Chapel Hill. His areas of interests broadly include health and labor economics. Specifically, he has explored the health and labor market outcomes among underrepresented and disadvantaged communities, while developing new empirical techniques to investigate the economic mechanisms and public policies driving these outcomes.
Rubalcaba is hosted by Carolina Population Center Fellow Sudhanshu (Ashu) Handa. Handa is the Lawrence I. Gilbert Distinguished Professor of Public Policy at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Friday, Mar 22
12-1
Carolina Square Room 2002
123 West Franklin Street
Location information is here.
PRESENTATION ABSTRACT
Approximately 800,000 unauthorized immigrants have participated in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, receiving deportation deferment and work eligibility. This paper investigates the impact of the DACA program on the labor supply of unauthorized immigrant youth, with a focus on the gender disparities in the labor market. We leverage an imputed immigration status as a mechanism for identification in a triple-differences model. Our results reveal DACA increased labor force participation by 3 to 4 percentage points among immigrant youth, which is primarily attributable to women with previous employment experience. The change in labor force participation among DACA eligible women is estimated to be approximately 3 percentage points greater than the estimated change in labor force participation among DACA eligible men, or approximately 27,000 women. The results presented throughout the analysis suggests DACA played a role in contracting the glaring gender disparity, measured in terms of labor force participation, among the unauthorized immigrant population. This study provides a unique insight into the relationship between immigration policy and labor supply behavior at the intersection of immigration status and gender.

Biomarker Expert Panel
2019-03-29 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York)
This panel will focus on challenges and opportunities related to inclusion of biomarkers in large population surveys, addressing:
What are the most informative, cutting edge methods and markers for use in population research? (Whole blood by venipuncture, dried blood spots, urine, feces, other tissues for analysis of the microbiome, metabolomics, disease and nutrient markers, and quantification of the exposome).
What informs decisions around inclusion of biomarkers in study protocols?
Feasibility: What is field-friendly?
Cost
Respondent burden
Establishing collaborations with lab science experts
Ethics: what are responsibilities around return of results?
This panel includes principal investigators of large population based studies with experience in measurement of biomarkers.
Linda Adair: The Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey; ECHO
Kathleen Harris: The National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent to Adult Health
Elizabeth Frankenberg: The Indonesia Family Life Survey (IFLS), the Work and Iron Status Evaluation (WISE), the Study of the Tsunami Aftermath and Recovery (STAR) and the Mexican Family Life Survey (MxFLS).
Katie Meyer: Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults Study (CARDIA)

Attainment Goals, Attainment Gaps: Understanding North Carolina’s Education Pipeline
2019-04-05 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On Friday, April 5, Rebecca Tippett, PhD, will present Attainment Goals, Attainment Gaps: Understanding North Carolina’s Education Pipeline as part of the Carolina Population Center 2018-2019 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Tippett is the Director of Carolina Demography. Located within the Carolina Population Center at UNC-Chapel Hill, Carolina Demography helps North Carolina’s leaders make sense of population-level changes throughout the state. Offering a full array of demographic data and research consulting services, Carolina Demography draws on the Center’s global expertise and 50+ years’ experience in population research. The work of their outstanding community of scholars informs decision making, planning, and program evaluation for businesses, foundations, government agencies, schools, and not-for-profit organizations who need to better understand their communities and environments. For more information, please visit https://demography.cpc.unc.edu.

Monitoring Health Progress: From Global Estimates to Local Health Data
2019-04-26 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York)
On Friday, April 26, Ties Boerma, PhD, will present Monitoring Health Progress: From Global Estimates to Local Health Data as part of the Carolina Population Center 2018-2019 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Boerma is Professor and Canada Research Chair for Population and Global Health at the Centre for Global Public Health, Department of Community Health Sciences, University of Manitoba, Canada, and Director of the Countdown to 2030 for Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health. He has over 30 years of experience working in global public health and research programs, including 10 years at national and districts levels in Africa. Boerma served as Director of the Evaluation project, precursor to today’s MEASURE Evaluation, while holding an appointment as Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has directed the World Health Organization’s work on health information and evidence for 12 years, and has worked for bilateral donors, national governments and research institutions, and published extensively on AIDS, maternal and child health, health information systems and statistics in epidemiological, demographic, and public health journals. A national of the Netherlands, he received his medical degree from the University of Groningen, and a PhD in Medical Demography from the University of Amsterdam.
Boerma is hosted by Carolina Population Center Fellow Sharon Weir. Weir is a Research Assistant Professor, Epidemiology in the Gillings School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Weir has collaborated with UNAIDS and the World Health Organization since 2009, co-chairing a working group to develop operational guidelines for monitoring and evaluation of HIV prevention and treatment programs for people who inject drugs, sex workers, men who have sex with men and transgender people

Work, Family and Health: Understanding Diverging Trends in Life Expectancy
2019-04-29 15:30 - 16:30 (America/New_York)
On Monday, April 29th, Lisa Berkman, PhD, will present Work, Family and Health: Understanding Diverging Trends in Life Expectancy as part of the J. Richard Udry Distinguished Lecture series at Carolina Population Center.
Berkman is the Director of the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, the Director of Harvard’s PhD program in Population Health Sciences, and the Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy, Epidemiology, and Global Health and Population. She is the principal investigator of the Health and Aging Study in Africa: A Longitudinal Study of an INDEPTH Community in South Africa (HAALSI), funded by the National Institute on Aging. She recently served as co-PI on the Work, Family & Health Network, a study on workplace practices and employee and family health.
This presentation is part of the J. Richard Udry Distinguished Lecture series. Dick Udry’s research was highly innovative and interdisciplinary—features that he embedded in the Carolina Population Center’s practices and culture as its Director. In recognition of his enduring contributions, CPC named its distinguished lecture series in his honor. Previous presenters have included Dr. Douglas Massey, Professor of Sociology at Princeton University (2018) and Dr. John Bongaarts, Vice President and Distinguished Scholar of the Population Council (2017).

Ryan Masters: Trends in Drug Availability, Economic Distress, and Drug-related Mortality among U.S. Whites
2019-08-30 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On August 30, 2019, Ryan Masters will present “Trends in Drug Availability, Economic Distress, and Drug-related Mortality among U.S. Whites” as part of the Carolina Population Series 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Ryan Masters is a social demographer by training with interests in examining long-term trends in US morbidity, chronic diseases, and mortality rates.
The Carolina Population Center hosts a weekly Friday lecture on a topic that enhances our understanding of population-related changes. The 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminars will feature talks related to aging trajectories, health behavior, the Zika virus, and the beverage tax – among other topics.
All seminars are held from 12:00 – 1:00 pm in Carolina Square Room 2002 at 123 W. Franklin St. unless otherwise indicated.
Instructors: To arrange for class attendance, contact CPC (cpc@unc.edu) by the Monday before the seminar. Streaming may be available and must be arranged at least one week in advance.

CANCELED: Teresa Seeman: Aging Trajectories Through Biopsychosocial Lens
2019-09-06 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
Due to Hurricane Dorian, this week’s interdisciplinary research seminar series lecture has been canceled. Please visit https://www.cpc.unc.edu/events/2019-2020-interdisciplinary-research-seminars for the latest news about the 2019-2020 seminar series.
On Friday, September 6, Teresa Seeman will present “Aging Trajectories Through Biopsychosocial Lens” as part of the Carolina Population Series 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Teresa Seeman, PhD, is Professor of Epidemiology at the Fielding School of Public Health and of Medicine in the Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Trained as an epidemiologist, with post-doctoral training in neuroendocrinology, her research interests are inter-disciplinary, focusing on role of social and psychological factors in health and aging, with particular interest in elucidating the biological pathways through which such factors impact on health. Working in both community- and laboratory-based contexts, her work has documented the widespread health effects of protective social factors (e.g., social relationships) and psychological characteristics (e.g., control beliefs, perceptions of self-efficacy), including effects on risks for physical and cognitive decline as well as overall longevity. Her research has also contributed to our understanding of how these social and psychological influences are mediated through multiple major biological regulatory systems. She has been a leader in empirical research on a multi-systems view of biological risk – allostatic load. Her work has shown that levels of allostatic load predict subsequent health outcomes, and that differences in allostatic load are related to social factors, including levels of social integration and support as well as more traditional measures of socio-economic status [SES]: higher allostatic load seen among those reporting less social integration and/or support and lower SES. Her current research is focused on developing more integrated models that incorporate consideration of life-course experiences with stressful and protective conditions and the cumulative impacts of these experiences on major biological regulatory systems that determine trajectories of health and longevity.
The Carolina Population Center hosts a weekly Friday lecture on a topic that enhances our understanding of population-related changes. The 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminars will feature talks related to aging trajectories, health behavior, the Zika virus, and the beverage tax – among other topics.
All seminars are held from 12:00 – 1:00 pm in Carolina Square Room 2002 at 123 W. Franklin St. unless otherwise indicated.
Instructors: To arrange for class attendance, contact CPC (cpc@unc.edu) by the Monday before the seminar. Streaming may be available and must be arranged at least one week in advance.

Jessica Faul: Where Do We Go from Here? Incorporating Genetics into Social Science and Health Research in the GWAS Era
2019-09-13 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On 9/13/2019, Jessica Faul will present “Where Do We Go from Here? Incorporating Genetics into Social Science and Health Research in the GWAS Era” as part of the Carolina Population Series 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Dr. Faul studies health and cognitive functioning, health disparities, and the integration of genetic and social science data in health research. She has worked with HRS core and restricted data files, examining genetic, gene-environment, and socioeconomic determinants of health and using longitudinal modeling and time-varying predictors of health outcomes.
Seminar abstract:
There has been a significant increase in the number of population-based and social-science surveys adding genetic data over the last decade. This has dramatically expanded the reach of these studies by making rich phenotypic data of interest to researchers from a wide variety of disciplines in the biological and health sciences. The expansion of population-based phenotypic, environmental and genomic data, plus the growing interest in integrating the behavioral and social sciences with biology, has the incredible potential for cutting edge science. Large-scale genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified genes with significant and replicated evidence of association with cognitive and physical function measures, longevity, obesity, health behaviors, and educational attainment, to name a few; however, the size of the genetic effects found to date, while increasing, explain only a fraction of trait variability. So where do we go next? This talk will focus on what we’ve learned from the GWAS era, provide research-based examples of theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches for integrating social and genomic data that move beyond GWAS, and will conclude with a discussion of what hurdles remain and what the future may hold for genetic research in a social science context including a discussion of issues related to biological data collection in a field setting.
The Carolina Population Center hosts a weekly Friday lecture on a topic that enhances our understanding of population-related changes. The 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminars will feature talks related to aging trajectories, health behavior, the Zika virus, and the beverage tax – among other topics.
All seminars are held from 12:00 – 1:00 pm in Carolina Square Room 2002 at 123 W. Franklin St. unless otherwise indicated.

Stephanie Martin: Engaging Family Members to Support Maternal and Child Nutrition
2019-09-20 12:00 - 13:00 UTC
On Friday, September 20, Stephanie Martin will present “Engaging Family Members to Support Maternal and Child Nutrition” as part of the Carolina Population Series 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Streaming information: Zoom Meeting https://zoom.us/j/807016500
Stephanie Martin is an assistant professor of Nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with more than 15 years’ experience designing and implementing behavioral interventions in low-income countries. Dr. Martin’s research focuses on the evaluation of behavioral interventions to improve maternal and child nutrition, implementation research to facilitate the translation of global recommendations into effective programs, and mixed-methods research to examine barriers and facilitators to infant and young child care and feeding practices.She is particularly interested in behavioral interventions to increase social support, and is currently examining family members’ experiences supporting women for improved maternal and child nutrition in Kenya and Tanzania. As a global health practitioner, Dr. Martin implemented policy-, facility- and community-level programs, and developed dozens of training and communication materials to promote maternal, child and adolescent health and nutrition, as well as HIV prevention, care and treatment.
The Carolina Population Center hosts a weekly Friday lecture on a topic that enhances our understanding of population-related changes. The 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminars will feature talks related to aging trajectories, health behavior, the Zika virus, and the beverage tax – among other topics.
All seminars are held from 12:00 – 1:00 pm in Carolina Square Room 2002 at 123 W. Franklin St. unless otherwise indicated.
Instructors: To arrange for class attendance, contact CPC (cpc@unc.edu) by the Monday before the seminar.

Leticia Marteleto: Live Births and Fertility amidst the Zika Epidemic
2019-09-27 12:00 - 13:00 UTC | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On 9/27/2019, Leticia Marteleto will present “Live Births and Fertility amidst the Zika Epidemic” as part of the Carolina Population Series 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Streaming information: Zoom Meeting https://zoom.us/j/196588418
Leticia J. Marteleto (Ph.D., Sociology, University of Michigan) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and a Faculty Research Associate of the Population Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin. She is also a research affiliate at the Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies at the same university. She is currently serving as Associate Chair of the Department of Sociology. She was Associate Chair of the Department of Sociology at The University of Texas at Austin from 2014 to 2018. Recent research has appeared in Demography, Demographic Research, Population and Development Review, Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, Social Forces and Studies in Family Planning. Her recent research has been funded by NICHD and NSF. In her newest research, funded through an NICHD R01, she focuses on inequalities in women’s reproductive behaviors and outcomes related to the Zika epidemic in Brazil.
The Carolina Population Center hosts a weekly Friday lecture on a topic that enhances our understanding of population-related changes. The 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminars will feature talks related to aging trajectories, health behavior, the Zika virus, and the beverage tax – among other topics.
All seminars are held from 12:00 – 1:00 pm in Carolina Square Room 2002 at 123 W. Franklin St. unless otherwise indicated.
Instructors: To arrange for class attendance, contact CPC (cpc@unc.edu) by the Monday before the seminar.

William Pan: Dying for Gold: Health, Environmental, and Social Impacts of Artisanal Gold Mining
2019-10-04 12:00 - 13:00 UTC | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On Friday, October 4, William Pan will present “Dying for Gold: Health, Environmental, and Social Impacts of Artisanal Gold Mining” as part of the Carolina Population Series 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Streaming information: Zoom Meeting https://zoom.us/j/493888866
William Pan is an Associate Professor of Global Environmental Health at Duke University with appointments in the Duke Global Health Institute (DGHI) and Nicholas School of Environment. He has over 15 years of experience studying the impact of human-environment dynamics on health, with a focus on tropical regions in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).
The Carolina Population Center hosts a weekly Friday lecture on a topic that enhances our understanding of population-related changes. The 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminars will feature talks related to aging trajectories, health behavior, the Zika virus, and the beverage tax – among other topics.
All seminars are held from 12:00 – 1:00 pm in Carolina Square Room 2002 at 123 W. Franklin St. unless otherwise indicated.
Instructors: To arrange for class attendance, contact CPC (cpc@unc.edu) by the Monday before the seminar. Streaming may be available and must be arranged at least one week in advance.

Sara Bleich: The Philadelphia Beverage Tax: Changes in Prices and Sales
2019-10-11 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On Friday, October 11, Sara Bleich will present “The Philadelphia Beverage Tax: Changes in Prices and Sales” as part of the Carolina Population Series 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Streaming information: Zoom meeting https://zoom.us/j/502678783
Sara Bleich is a Professor of Public Health Policy at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health in the Department of Health Policy and Management. She is also the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and a member of the faculty at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
Sara’s research provides evidence to support policies to prevent obesity and diet-related diseases, particularly among vulnerable populations. A signature theme throughout her work is an interest in asking simple, meaningful questions which can fill important knowledge gaps. Sara’s research has been published in journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, British Medical Journal, Health Affairs, and American Journal of Public Health and has been featured in outlets such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and National Public Radio.
Sara has received numerous awards including one for excellence in public interest communication. Sara served as a White House Fellow from 2015 to 2016 where she worked as a Senior Policy Advisor to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the First Lady’s Let’s Move initiative. She holds degrees from Columbia (BA, Psychology) and Harvard (PhD, Health Policy).
The Carolina Population Center hosts a weekly Friday lecture on a topic that enhances our understanding of population-related changes. The 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminars will feature talks related to aging trajectories, health behavior, the Zika virus, and the beverage tax – among other topics.
All seminars are held from 12:00 – 1:00 pm in Carolina Square Room 2002 at 123 W. Franklin St. unless otherwise indicated.
Instructors: To arrange for class attendance, contact CPC (cpc@unc.edu) by the Monday before the seminar. Streaming may be available and must be arranged at least one week in advance.

Jennie Brand: Uncovering Treatment Effect Heterogeneity using Machine Learning
2019-10-25 12:00 - 13:00 UTC | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On Friday, October 25, Jennie Brand will present “Uncovering Treatment Effect Heterogeneity using Machine Learning” as part of the Carolina Population Series 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Streaming information: Zoom Meeting https://zoom.us/j/889917518
Jennie E. Brand is Professor of Sociology and Statistics at UCLA.
She is also Director of the California Center for Population Research and Co-Director of the Center for Social Statistics (CSS). Prof. Brand studies social stratification and inequality, and its implications for various outcomes that indicate life chances. Her research agenda encompasses three main areas: (1) access to and the impact of higher education; (2) the consequences of disruptive events, such as job displacement; and (3) causal inference and quantitative methods for panel data.
The Carolina Population Center hosts a weekly Friday lecture on a topic that enhances our understanding of population-related changes. The 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminars will feature talks related to aging trajectories, health behavior, the Zika virus, and the beverage tax – among other topics.
All seminars are held from 12:00 – 1:00 pm in Carolina Square Room 2002 at 123 W. Franklin St. unless otherwise indicated.
Instructors: To arrange for class attendance, contact CPC (cpc@unc.edu) by the Monday before the seminar. Streaming may be available and must be arranged at least one week in advance.

Chris Wiesen: Power Estimation for Hypothesis Tests Commonly Used in Social Science
2019-11-01 12:00 - 13:00 UTC | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On Friday, November 1, Chris Wiesen will present “Power Estimation for Hypothesis Tests Commonly Used in Social Science.” as part of the Carolina Population Series 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Streaming information: Zoom Meeting https://zoom.us/j/354372015
Chris Wiesen earned a M.S.Ed at the University of Pennsylvania (1988) and an M.A. (1992) and a Ph.D. (1994) at UNC. Before coming to the Odum Institute, Wiesen spent one year with the National Institute of Statistical Sciences, two years visiting Duke University and three years at Research Triangle Institute (now Research Triangle International). Along with offering consulting services to graduate students and faculty in the UNC system, he teaches short courses on various software packages including SAS and SUDANN and topics on quantitative analysis. Wiesen teaches the required CPSM course: Survey Sampling.
The Carolina Population Center hosts a weekly Friday lecture on a topic that enhances our understanding of population-related changes. The 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminars will feature talks related to aging trajectories, health behavior, the Zika virus, and the beverage tax – among other topics.
All seminars are held from 12:00 – 1:00 pm in Carolina Square Room 2002 at 123 W. Franklin St. unless otherwise indicated.
Instructors: To arrange for class attendance, contact CPC (cpc@unc.edu) by the Monday before the seminar. Streaming may be available and must be arranged at least one week in advance.

2019 Hettleman Talks: Kavita Singh Ongechi
2019-11-04 16:00 - 18:00 (America/New_York) | Carolina Club, George Watts Hill Alumni Center, 106 Stadium Drive, Chapel Hill, NC, 27514, United States
Attend these TEDX-style presentations from the four winners of the annual Phillip and Ruth Hettleman Prizes for Artistic and Scholarly Achievement, given to researchers conducting innovative work in their fields.
The late Phillip Hettleman, a member of the UNC class of 1921, and his wife Ruth established the prestigious award in 1986 in order to recognize the achievements of outstanding junior faculty.
This year’s Hettleman Prize awardees are: Uffe Bergeton, associate professor in the Asian studies department within the College of Arts & Sciences; Kavita Singh Ongechi, associate professor in the maternal and child health department within the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and a Faculty Fellow at the Carolina Population Center; and from the School of Medicine, Li Qian, associate professor in the pathology and laboratory medicine department, and Greg Wang, associate professor in the biochemistry and biophysics department.
Singh (Ongechi) ‘s work is focused on exploring the role of social factors (education, poverty, stigma, and gender equality) in addition to the role of specific interventions and environmental factors on health outcomes. Much of her work is also focused on reaching the poorest and most vulnerable populations with interventions and evaluating national efforts to improve maternal and child health.
Find out more about this years winners here.
Click here to register for the event, however, registration is not required.

Marissa Hall: Health warning labels: Applying behavioral science experiments to inform public policy
2019-11-08 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On Friday, November 8, Marissa Hall will present “Health warning labels: Applying behavioral science experiments to inform public policy” as part of the Carolina Population Series 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Streaming information: Zoom Meeting https://zoom.us/j/358600217
Marissa Hall uses behavioral science to inform policies to prevent cancer and other chronic diseases. Much of her research focuses on the impact of pictorial tobacco product warnings on both intended and unintended outcomes. She is also leading several experiments to examine the impact of obesity prevention policies such as sugar-sweetened beverage health warnings and taxes, with a focus on preventing childhood obesity among Latinx populations. Her research is currently supported by a K01 Career Development Award from NIH and grants from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
The Carolina Population Center hosts a weekly Friday lecture on a topic that enhances our understanding of population-related changes. The 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminars will feature talks related to aging trajectories, health behavior, the Zika virus, and the beverage tax – among other topics.
All seminars are held from 12:00 – 1:00 pm in Carolina Square Room 2002 at 123 W. Franklin St. unless otherwise indicated.
Instructors: To arrange for class attendance, contact CPC (cpc@unc.edu) by the Monday before the seminar. Streaming may be available and must be arranged at least one week in advance.

Jennifer Glick: Family Migration and Educational Aspirations: Preliminary results from the first wave of the Family Migration and Early Life Outcomes (FAMELO) Project
2019-11-15 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On Friday, November 15, Jennifer Glick will present “Family Migration and Educational Aspirations: Preliminary results from the first wave of the Family Migration and Early Life Outcomes (FAMELO) Project” as part of the Carolina Population Series 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Streaming information: Zoom Meeting https://zoom.us/j/420629922
Jennifer Glick is a social demographer who focuses primarily on migration and family processes. Her work has been directed at the intersection of migration and the family life course and the extent to which migration alters educational and labor force trajectories and influences the timing and patterns of family formation. She is also interested in the importance of migration for intergenerational relationships and living arrangements.
The Carolina Population Center hosts a weekly Friday lecture on a topic that enhances our understanding of population-related changes. The 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminars will feature talks related to aging trajectories, health behavior, the Zika virus, and the beverage tax – among other topics.
All seminars are held from 12:00 – 1:00 pm in Carolina Square Room 2002 at 123 W. Franklin St. unless otherwise indicated.
Instructors: To arrange for class attendance, contact CPC (cpc@unc.edu) by the Monday before the seminar. Streaming may be available and must be arranged at least one week in advance.

Keely Muscatell: The Social Life of the Immune System: Bi-Directional Links between Social Experiences and Inflammation
2019-11-22 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On 11/22/2019, Keely Muscatell will present “The Social Life of the Immune System: Bi-Directional Links between Social Experiences and Inflammation” as part of the Carolina Population Series 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Keely Muscatell is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology & Neuroscience and the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center at UNC Chapel Hill. Trained as a social neuroscientist, her research focuses on elucidating the neurobiological mechanisms that link social experiences and health. Her work is highly interdisciplinary, as she employs theory and methods from social psychology, cognitive and affective neuroscience, psychoneuroimmunology, pharmacology, and population health. Keely completed post-doctoral training in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Scholars program at UCSF/UC Berkeley, and in the Psychology Department at Berkeley. She received her Ph.D. in Psychology from UCLA in June 2013, an MA in Psychology from UCLA in 2009, and a BA in Psychology and Spanish from the University of Oregon in 2006. When not in the lab, Keely can be found reading Dave Eggers, Ben Lerner, and Zadie Smith, watching college football, and/or drinking craft beer while listening to their vinyl collection with her partner, Dave Rose.
The Carolina Population Center hosts a weekly Friday lecture on a topic that enhances our understanding of population-related changes. The 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminars will feature talks related to aging trajectories, health behavior, the Zika virus, and the beverage tax – among other topics.
All seminars are held from 12:00 – 1:00 pm in Carolina Square Room 2002 at 123 W. Franklin St. unless otherwise indicated.
Instructors: To arrange for class attendance, contact CPC (cpc@unc.edu) by the Monday before the seminar. Streaming may be available and must be arranged at least one week in advance.

Add Health Team: Add Health Wave V: New Directions, New Data
2020-01-10 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On Friday, January 10, the Add Health Team will present “Add Health Wave V: New Directions, New Data” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) is a longitudinal study of a nationally representative sample of adolescents in grades 7-12 in the United States during the 1994-95 school year. The Add Health cohort has been followed into young adulthood with four in-home interviews, the most recent in 2008, when the sample was aged 24-32. Add Health re-interviewed cohort members in a Wave V follow-up from 2016-2018 to collect social, environmental, behavioral, and biological data with which to track the emergence of chronic disease as the cohort moves through their fourth decade of life.
Add Health combines longitudinal survey data on respondents’ social, economic, psychological and physical well-being with contextual data on the family, neighborhood, community, school, friendships, peer groups, and romantic relationships, providing unique opportunities to study how social environments and behaviors in adolescence are linked to health and achievement outcomes in young adulthood. The fourth wave of interviews expanded the collection of biological data in Add Health to understand the social, behavioral, and biological linkages in health trajectories as the Add Health cohort ages through adulthood, and the fifth wave of data collection continues this biological data expansion.
Streaming: https://zoom.us/j/990224137
A recording will also be available after the event. You can see previous events here.
Instructors: To arrange for class attendance, contact CPC (cpc@unc.edu) by the Monday before the seminar.
The Carolina Population Center hosts a weekly Friday lecture on a topic that enhances our understanding of population-related changes. The 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminars will feature talks related to aging trajectories, health behavior, the Zika virus, and the beverage tax – among other topics.
All seminars are held from 12:00 – 1:00 pm in Carolina Square Room 2002 at 123 W. Franklin St. unless otherwise indicated.

Myron Cohen: Prevention of HIV 2020
2020-01-17 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On January 17, 2020, Myron Cohen, the Associate Vice Chancellor for Global Health and Medical Affairs; the Yeargan-Bate Distinguished Professor of Medicine, Microbiology and Immunology, and Epidemiology; and the Director of the Institute for Global Health & Infectious Diseases, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will present “Prevention of HIV 2020” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Dr. Cohen’s research work focuses on the transmission and prevention of transmission of STD pathogens including HIV. Much of his work has been conducted at the research sites he and his group have developed in Lilongwe, Malawi and Beijing, China. Dr. Cohen and his coworkers have identified the concentration of HIV in genital secretions required for transmission of HIV ( NEJM 336:1072, 1997; AIDS 15: 621, 2001), and the effects of genital tract inflammation on HIV (Lancet 349: 1868, 1997).
Along with Sylvia Becker-Dreps, MD, MPH, Natalie Bowman, MD, MPH, and Filemon Bucardo of the University of Nicaragua-Leόn, Dr. Cohen is studying Zika as a sexually transmitted disease.
Streaming: https://zoom.us/j/490091454
A recording will be available after the event. You can see previous events here.
Instructors: To arrange for class attendance, contact CPC (cpc@unc.edu) by the Monday before the seminar.
The Carolina Population Center hosts a weekly Friday lecture on a topic that enhances our understanding of population-related changes. The 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminars will feature talks related to aging trajectories, health behavior, the Zika virus, and the beverage tax – among other topics.
All seminars are held from 12:00 – 1:00 pm in Carolina Square Room 2002 at 123 W. Franklin St. unless otherwise indicated.

Rachel Margolis: The Effects of Gender Equality-Focused Parental Benefits on Union Stability
2020-01-24 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On January 24, 2020, Rachel Margolis will present “The Effects of Gender Equality-Focused Parental Benefits on Union Stability” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Rachel Margolis is an associate professor in the sociology department at the University of Western Ontario, where she has worked since her PhD in Demography and Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania. Her research addresses population aging, changes in family networks, population health, and social policy.
Presentation Abstract:
This paper examines how a policy aimed to promote gender equality at home and in the workplace unintentionally made unions more stable. Paid parental benefits policies were originally designed to increase women’s return to work after childbirth. However, more recent extensions of these policies aim to promote more equal care and paid work for parents. This is a great example of a social policy which was first used to encourage the first phase of the gender revolution, the movement of women into the paid labor force, and then have been adapted to promote the second phase of this revolution, the movement of men into care work and housework. Even though these policies have no explicit aims regarding relationship stability, these policies have the potential to shift union stability because the newly unequal division of labor is a source of stress and common cause of union dissolution for parents. Using administrative data from Canada, this paper contributes to a broad literature in sociology about whether and how family policies can shape unions and family structure.
We record as many videos as possible. You can see previous events here.
Instructors: To arrange for class attendance, contact CPC (cpc@unc.edu) by the Monday before the seminar.
The Carolina Population Center hosts a weekly Friday lecture on a topic that enhances our understanding of population-related changes. The 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminars will feature talks related to aging trajectories, health behavior, the Zika virus, and the beverage tax – among other topics.
All seminars are held from 12:00 – 1:00 pm in Carolina Square Room 2002 at 123 W. Franklin St. unless otherwise indicated.

CANCELED: Adriana Lleras-Muney: Do Youth Employment Programs Work? Evidence from the New Deal
2020-01-31 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
Please note: This lecture has been canceled. We will update the CPC website with a new date and time as soon as the lecture has been rescheduled.

On January 31, 2020, Adriana Lleras-Muney will present “Do Youth Employment Programs Work? Evidence from the New Deal” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Adriana Lleras-Muney is a Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics at UCLA. She received her Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University and was an assistant professor of economics at Princeton University for seven years before moving to UCLA. Her research examines the relationships between socio-economic status and health, with a particular focus on education and income. Her most recent work investigates whether cash transfers to poor families improve poor children’s education, lifetime incomes and long term health. She is an associated editor for the Journal of Health Economics and she serves in the board editors of two other journals, Demography and the American Economic Journal-Economic Policy. She is also a permanent member of the Social Sciences and Population Studies Study Section at the National Institute of Health. Lleras-Muney is a faculty fellow at the California Center for Population Research (CCPR), the Center for Economic and Social Research and the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); and a member of the California Policy Lab.
We record as many videos as possible. You can see previous events here.
Instructors: To arrange for class attendance, contact CPC (cpc@unc.edu) by the Monday before the seminar.
The Carolina Population Center hosts a weekly Friday lecture on a topic that enhances our understanding of population-related changes. The 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminars will feature talks related to aging trajectories, health behavior, the Zika virus, and the beverage tax – among other topics.
All seminars are held from 12:00 – 1:00 pm in Carolina Square Room 2002 at 123 W. Franklin St. unless otherwise indicated.

Til Stürmer: Propensity scores - principles, implications and use for study design
2020-02-07 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On February 7, 2020, Til Stürmer, the Nancy A. Dreyer Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Epidemiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will present “Propensity scores – principles, implications and use for study design” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Dr. Stürmer is an internist and epidemiologist with expertise in state of the art methods for nonexperimental treatment comparisons, including comparative effectiveness research, and real world evidence based on real world data. He has worked as a cancer epidemiologist, has over 15 year experience in analyzing claims data and merging claims data to other data sources, and is an internationally recognized leader in pharmacoepidemiology, propensity scores, and disease risk scores.
Dr. Stürmer has led UNC-Chapel Hill’s pharmacoepidemiology program from 2008 through 2018 to become one of the largest and most recognized doctoral training programs in pharmacoepidemiology; During that time, he was also the director of the Center for Pharmacoepidemiology in the Department of Epidemiology overseeing its expansion to multiple members. Funded by the National Institute on Aging (R01 AG023178, now R01 AG056479) since 2005, his interdisciplinary research team published over 100 papers focusing on developing and implementing novel methods to answer clinical questions of importance to older adults in the absence of alternative evidence.
He is a former president of the International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology, a former member on the FDA Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee, and director of Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) at the NC TraCS Institute, UNC’s Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA).
Presentation Abstract:
Propensity scores are increasingly used to address confounding in nonexperimental research. While they can efficiently balance measured confounders, their application goes beyond confounding control and has helped researchers to highlight several issues related to study design that can help us to better understand and address sources of variability in exposures (treatments).
We record as many videos as possible. You can see previous events here.
Instructors: To arrange for class attendance, contact CPC (cpc@unc.edu) by the Monday before the seminar.
The Carolina Population Center hosts a weekly Friday lecture on a topic that enhances our understanding of population-related changes. The 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminars will feature talks related to aging trajectories, health behavior, the Zika virus, and the beverage tax – among other topics.
All seminars are held from 12:00 – 1:00 pm in Carolina Square Room 2002 at 123 W. Franklin St. unless otherwise indicated.

CPC Hackathon 2020
2020-02-07 13:15 - 17:30 (America/New_York) | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
Friday, February 7, 2020
1:15 pm – 5:45 pm
Carolina Population Center
Register your team to participate by Monday, January 27th using this form.

Schedule of Events

Time
Activity

1:15 pm – 1:30 pm
Welcome and Explanation of Research Issue/Problem

1:30 pm – 3:50 pm

Hacking Begins

3:50 pm – 4:00 pm

Team Set-Up for Presentations in 2002 CSQ

4:00 pm – 5:15 pm

Team Presentations

5:15 pm – 5:30 pm

Judges Deliberate

5:30 pm

Event Wrap-Up

FAQs
What is a hackathon?
The hackathon is an event where CPC predoctoral trainees and postdoctoral scholars will come together to form interdisciplinary teams and work on developing a research design for a population focused issue or problem. The specific population issue or problem will be provided to you at the beginning of the Hackathon; you will have the afternoon to work on the issue/problem and prepare a presentation based on your design to a panel of faculty judges. The overall goals of this Hackathon are to stimulate interdisciplinary collaboration among trainees; develop and exhibit your research design skills; and have fun.

What is the problem/issue that we will be hacking to solve?
The problem/issue will focus on a population-oriented topic. However, the details of the problem/issue will not be announced until the beginning of the event.

Who can attend the event?
This event is open to all trainees (population and biosocial). However, team registration is required and space is limited.

Is there a limit on how many teams that can sign up for the event?
Yes, only six teams will be allowed to participate in the Hackathon, so register early!
What are the requirements for developing a team?
The requirements for team formation include:

Each team should consist of 3-4 trainees
Teams cannot have more than 1 postdoctoral scholar
Teams cannot have more than 1 trainee that is in their first year of graduate studies at UNC
There must be at least 2 disciplines represented on each team

What is the deadline to register my team for the event?
All teams must be registered by 5:00 PM on Monday, February 4th. Register your team here. Please designate one member from your team to fill out the form on behalf of all of the team members.

How will teams get judged?
Each team will have 5 minutes to pitch their idea and 5 minutes for questions and answers. Your presentation can be a PowerPoint presentation, it may be interactive (with audience participation), or whatever you think will work in terms of describing your research design. Be as creative as you want!

Who will be judging our presentations?
We have assembled an interdisciplinary judging panel of 3 CPC faculty fellows who are experts in population research.

What will be the judging criteria?
Presentations will be judged based the following criteria:

The degree to which the hypothesis(es) reflects important social science theories.
The extent to which the proposed study effectively addresses the hypothesis(es).
The creativity of the proposed research design, measures and approach.
The feasibility of the proposed research design, measures and approach.
The degree to which the proposed study could actually push science forward in this area of study.
The clarity and effectiveness of the presentation.

What does my team receive if we win the competition?
The estimate total of the prize package is $500. The package will be announced the day of the event!

Is there any prep required before the event?
Once you assemble your team and register for the event, there is nothing else that you will need to do until the day of the event.

Will we have dedicated space to work on our project?
Yes, each team will be assigned a conference room to work on their project the day of the event.
Contact
For more information about the Hackathon, please contact Michelle Collins.

Oscar Gonzalez: On Learning Machine Learning
2020-02-14 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On February 14, 2020, Oscar Gonzalez, an Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will present “On Learning Machine Learning” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Dr. Gonzalez studies statistical mediation, machine learning/data mining, and psychometrics and how these statistical methods can help identify, evaluate, and measure mechanisms of behavior change in interventions or prevention programs.
Presentation abstract:
On Learning Machine Learning
A lot of research in the social sciences has focused on hypothesis-driven, explanatory approaches to data analysis. Machine learning could supplement a researcher’s analytic toolbox to explore patterns in datasets and study research hypothesis that focus on prediction. In this talk, I provide an overview of basic concepts of machine learning and misconceptions for its use in social science research. I also review different types of machine learning methodology and the role of machine learning in area of data science. Finally, I briefly discuss part of my research on the intersection between machine learning and psychometrics for short-form development and diagnostic assessment and discuss what each of these fields could learn from each other.
We record as many videos as possible. You can see previous events here.
Instructors: To arrange for class attendance, contact CPC (cpc@unc.edu) by the Monday before the seminar.
The Carolina Population Center hosts a weekly Friday lecture on a topic that enhances our understanding of population-related changes. The 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminars will feature talks related to aging trajectories, health behavior, the Zika virus, and the beverage tax – among other topics.
All seminars are held from 12:00 – 1:00 pm in Carolina Square Room 2002 at 123 W. Franklin St. unless otherwise indicated.

Alison Buttenheim: Nudging or Fudging? Realizing the potential for behavioral economics to improve population health
2020-02-21 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
Watch live via Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/491702016
On February 21, 2020, Alison Buttenheim will present “Nudging or Fudging? Realizing the potential for behavioral economics to improve population health” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series. Buttenheim is an Associate Professor of Nursing at Penn Nursing, an Assistant Professor of Health Policy, Perelman School of Medicine; a Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, the Associate Director of the Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics and the Associate Director of the National Clinician Scholars Program at the University of Pennsylvania.
Alison M. Buttenheim wants to understand how people make decisions about their health and focuses her research on the use of behavioral economics to increase the uptake of evidence-based care. Her work ranges from how households in Peru decide whether to apply insecticide to eliminate a disease-carrying insect vector to why parents in the United States request exemptions from child immunization laws.
Presentation Abstract:
Applying behavioral economics insights to global health programs offers great potential to address the “last mile” behavioral challenges to achieving better health outcomes. Researchers and practitioners from several disciplines have generated promising results in diverse settings through focused laboratory or basic science studies and through field experiments. There is robust demand from health ministries, funders, and bilateral and multilateral development agencies for bringing a behavioral economics lens to intervention and program development. That said, the field is also producing many null or negative trials, many of which are never published, and is also falling short in widespread dissemination and scale of successful interventions. In this talk, I propose four barriers (and some solutions) to realizing the full potential for behavioral economics approaches to meaningfully improve population health: imprecision in the use of the “nudge” concept, inadequate intervention design processes, ignoring heterogeneous treatment effects, and insufficient attention paid to implementation.
We record as many videos as possible. You can see previous events here.
Instructors: To arrange for class attendance, contact CPC (cpc@unc.edu) by the Monday before the seminar.
The Carolina Population Center hosts a weekly Friday lecture on a topic that enhances our understanding of population-related changes. The 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminars will feature talks related to aging trajectories, health behavior, the Zika virus, and the beverage tax – among other topics.
All seminars are held from 12:00 – 1:00 pm in Carolina Square Room 2002 at 123 W. Franklin St. unless otherwise indicated.

Jessica Su: Wealth, Assets, and Unintended Childbearing
2020-02-28 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On February 28, 2020, Jessica Su, Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Faculty Fellow at the Carolina Population Center, will present “Wealth, Assets, and Unintended Childbearing” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Dr. Jessica Houston Su is a sociologist who studies American family life and inequality. As a family demographer, she uses a sociological lens and quantitative analytic techniques to examine social patterns of family formation and how they are related to the health and well-being of parents and children. Her research contributes to the sociological literature in families, health, inequality, work, and demography. One stream of her research examines the causes and consequences of unintended and nonmarital fertility. For example, she examines how both macro and micro economic resources shape patterns of unintended childbearing. She also examines the short- and long-term implications of unintended childbearing for the mental health of parents and children. Another stream of research examines how nonstandard work schedules are related to the well-being of working mothers and their young children. Her research appears in peer-reviewed journals such as Demography, the Journal of Marriage and Family, and the Journal of Health and Social Behavior. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Cornell University and her B.A. in Sociology from Dartmouth College.
We record as many videos as possible. You can see previous events here.
Instructors: To arrange for class attendance, contact CPC (cpc@unc.edu) by the Monday before the seminar.
The Carolina Population Center hosts a weekly Friday lecture on a topic that enhances our understanding of population-related changes. The 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminars will feature talks related to aging trajectories, health behavior, the Zika virus, and the beverage tax – among other topics.
All seminars are held from 12:00 – 1:00 pm in Carolina Square Room 2002 at 123 W. Franklin St. unless otherwise indicated.

CANCELED: J. Richard Udry Distinguished Lecture: Teresa Seeman: Aging Trajectories Through Biopsychosocial Lens
2020-03-05 15:30 - 17:00 (America/New_York) | Joan Heckler Gillings Auditorium (133 Rosenau Hall), 133 Rosenau Hall, 135 Dauer Drive, Gillings School of Public Health, Chapel Hill, NC, 27599‑7400, United States
Update: This lecture has been canceled. We will update the website with more information shortly.
The J. Richard Udry Distinguished Lecture will be held on March 5, 2020, 3:30-5:00 pm.
Teresa Seeman, PhD, will present “Aging Trajectories Through Biopsychosocial Lens.” Seeman is Professor of Epidemiology at the Fielding School of Public Health and of Medicine in the Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Trained as an epidemiologist, with post-doctoral training in neuroendocrinology, her research interests are inter-disciplinary, focusing on role of social and psychological factors in health and aging, with particular interest in elucidating the biological pathways through which such factors impact on health.
Working in both community- and laboratory-based contexts, her work has documented the widespread health effects of protective social factors (e.g., social relationships) and psychological characteristics (e.g., control beliefs, perceptions of self-efficacy), including effects on risks for physical and cognitive decline as well as overall longevity. Her research has also contributed to our understanding of how these social and psychological influences are mediated through multiple major biological regulatory systems. She has been a leader in empirical research on a multi-systems view of biological risk – allostatic load.
Her work has shown that levels of allostatic load predict subsequent health outcomes, and that differences in allostatic load are related to social factors, including levels of social integration and support as well as more traditional measures of socio-economic status [SES]: higher allostatic load seen among those reporting less social integration and/or support and lower SES. Her current research is focused on developing more integrated models that incorporate consideration of life-course experiences with stressful and protective conditions and the cumulative impacts of these experiences on major biological regulatory systems that determine trajectories of health and longevity.
Abstract:
The presentation will examine evidence linking socio-economic and socio-emotional life-histories to trajectories of aging with explicit attention to the multiple biological pathways involved in these relationships. Taking a life-course perspective, illustrative examples of the patterning of these relationships across the life-course will be reviewed. Evidence of later-life plasticity of psychosocial and biological influences will be highlighted, illustrating the potential for health promotion via psychosocial interventions even at later ages.
About the annual J. Richard Udry Distinguished Lecture Series: Dick Udry’s research was highly innovative and interdisciplinary—features that he embedded in the Carolina Population Center’s practices and culture as its Director. In recognition of his enduring contributions, CPC named its distinguished lecture series in his honor. Previous presenters have included Dr. Lisa Berkman, the Director of the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, the Director of Harvard’s PhD program in Population Health Sciences, and the Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy, Epidemiology, and Global Health and Population (2019); Dr. Douglas Massey, Professor of Sociology at Princeton University (2018) and Dr. John Bongaarts, Vice President and Distinguished Scholar of the Population Council (2017).

CANCELED: Chantel Martin: Embodying Place: Neighborhood Environment and Health Disparities
2020-03-20 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
This event has been canceled. We will update this page when it’s rescheduled.
On March 20, 2020, Chantel Martin, a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will present “Embodying Place: Neighborhood Environment and Health Disparities” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series. Martin is also a Postdoctoral Scholar at CPC.
Chantel Martin is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Epidemiology and the Carolina Population Center at UNC Chapel Hill. As an epidemiologist, her interdisciplinary research program combines methods and models from social science, biology, and life course epidemiology to understand the impact of the social environment during sensitive periods of development on racial/ethnic disparities in cardiometabolic health disparities; and elucidate the biological underpinnings that link the social environment to health disparities. Her research is currently supported by an NIH K99/R00 Pathways to Independence Award and the NIMHD Social Epigenomics Research Focused on Minority Health and Health Disparities program. Chantel received her PhD in Epidemiology from UNC Chapel Hill and her MSPH from UNC Charlotte. Her talk will explore the association of the neighborhood social environment with cardiometabolic health across the life course and introduce potential biological mechanisms that may partially explain these associations.
We record as many videos as possible. You can see previous events here.
Instructors: To arrange for class attendance, contact CPC (cpc@unc.edu) by the Monday before the seminar.
The Carolina Population Center hosts a weekly Friday lecture on a topic that enhances our understanding of population-related changes. The 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminars will feature talks related to aging trajectories, health behavior, the Zika virus, and the beverage tax – among other topics.
All seminars are held from 12:00 – 1:00 pm in Carolina Square Room 2002 at 123 W. Franklin St. unless otherwise indicated.
