Carolina Population Center

Rebecca Kreitzer: Unplanning Pregnancy: The Politics of Contraception Deserts
2021-09-17 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On September 17, 2021, Rebecca Kreitzer, Associate Professor of Public Policy and an Adjunct Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will present “Unplanning Pregnancy: The Politics of Contraception Deserts” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2021-2022 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series. This is a project with Candis Watts Smith (Duke), Kellen Kane (UNC Policy PhD student), Tracee Saunders (former UNC Policy undergrad, now PhD student at Iowa).
Dr. Kreitzer’s research focuses on gender, political representation, political inequality, and public policy in the US states. She teaches classes on the politics of policy, public policy theory, gender and sexuality policy, and interest groups.
Abstract:
Historically, access to contraception has been supported in a bipartisan way, best exemplified by consistent Congressional funding of Title X–the only federal program specifically focused on providing affordable reproductive healthcare to American residents. However, in an era of partisan polarization, Title X has become a political and symbolic pawn, in part due to its connection to family planning organizations like Planned Parenthood. The conflicts around Title X highlight the effects of the intertwining of abortion politics with that of contraception policy, particularly as they relate to reproductive justice and gendered policymaking. To what extent are contraception deserts—places characterized by inequitable access to Title X—developed or expanded in response to policy changes around contraception and reproductive health? What is the demographic make-up of these spaces of inequality?
We record as many seminars as possible. You can see previous events here.

Aunchalee Palmquist: Advancing Health Equity in the first 1,000 days: Breastfeeding and Reproductive Justice
2021-09-24 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On September 24, 2021, Aunchalee Palmquist, Assistant Professor in the Department of Maternal and Child Health at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and an affiliate of the Carolina Global Breastfeeding Institute (CGBI), will present as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2021-2022 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Dr. Palmquist’s research addresses the intersectionality of perinatal maternal, newborn and young child health disparities globally and in the U.S., with an emphasis on breastfeeding. Dr. Palmquist’s interdisciplinary work bridges medical anthropology and global public health. She conducts community-based participatory research and uses both ethnographic methods and mixed-methods approaches. Her scholarship and practice are informed by human rights based approaches and a reproductive justice lens.
Dr. Palmquist is the lead for the CGBI Lactation and Infant Feeding in Emergencies (L.I.F.E.™) Initiative. She serves as a CGBI representative on the WHO/UNICEF Global Breastfeeding Collective, the Emergency Nutrition Network IFE Core Group, and the United States Breastfeeding Committee as Co-Steward of the COVID-19 Infant and Young Child Feeding Constellation. Dr. Palmquist has previously served as an International Lactation Consultants Association liaison to the United Nations.
Abstract: The perinatal period is a critical time during which health interventions have potential to impact immediate, life course, and intergenerational outcomes for mothers, children, and families. Collaborative community-engaged approaches are critical to advancing health equity for this population. In this presentation, Dr. Palmquist will describe her research on breastfeeding and reproductive justice globally and locally.
We record as many seminars as possible. You can see previous events here.

Thomas McDade: Biosocial 2.0: Future directions for research at the interface of the biological and social sciences
2021-10-01 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On October 1, 2021, Thom McDade, a biological anthropologist and the Director of the Laboratory for Human Biology Research at Northwestern University, will present “Biosocial 2.0: Future directions for research at the interface of the biological and social sciences” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2021-2022 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Thom McDade is a biological anthropologist specializing in human population biology. His work is primarily concerned with the dynamic interrelationships among society, biology and health over the life course, with an emphasis on life course approaches to stress and the human immune system. The development and application of minimally-invasive methods for integrating physiological measures into population-based research is also a major area of interest. Prior research in Samoa, and ongoing research in Bolivia and Ecuador, investigates how local cultural transitions associated with globalization affect human development and health, while research in the Philippines is exploring the long term developmental consequences of early nutritional and microbial environments. He is currently applying conceptual and methodological tools from this work to US-based research on health disparities, with an emphasis on the potential contributions of stress and environments in infancy.
Abstract:
Novel methods for measuring human biology and health in non-clinical settings are generating new opportunities for discovery at the interface of the social and biological sciences. In this seminar I highlight how biosocial approaches have enriched our explanatory and conceptual frameworks, and I underscore how work in this area can fundamentally change how we think about human biology and the origins of social inequalities in health.
We record as many seminars as possible. You can see previous events here.

Marcia (Marcy) J. Carlson and Peter Fallesen: Longer lives, Later Births: Generational Overlap in Denmark and the U.S.
2021-10-08 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On October 8, 2021, Marcy Carlson, Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Peter Fallesen (Rockwool Foundation and Stockholm University) will present as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2021-2022 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Carlson’s primary research interests center on the associations between family contexts and the wellbeing of parents and children. She has explored the changing composition of families and aspects of their functioning. Her early work explored how family structure was associated with child and adolescent being, identifying fathers’ involvement with children as a key mechanism by which family structure affects offspring. Much of her recent work is focused on growing family diversity and complexity, particularly with respect to fertility patterns and fatherhood, as well as how family change is linked with inequality in both the U.S. and cross-national contexts.
Fallesen is an associate professor (docent) of sociology in the LNU/level-of-living group. Until December 2016, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the same place. He received my PhD in sociology from the University of Copenhagen in February 2015. He is also a Research Professor at the Rockwool Foundation Research Unit in Copenhagen and a research affiliate at the Center for Demography and Ecology, University of Wisconsin – Madison. He previously held visiting positions at Yale University, UC Berkeley, and European University Institute.
We record as many seminars as possible. You can see previous events here.

Yamnia I. Cortés: Women’s reproductive health across the life course: A marker for cardiovascular disease risk in later life?
2021-10-15 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On October 15, 2021, Yamnia I. Cortés, Assistant Professor of Cardiovascular Nursing, Health Disparities, Women’s Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will present “Women’s reproductive health across the life course: A marker for cardiovascular disease risk in later life?” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2021-2022 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.

Dr. Cortés obtained her BA in Biology and completed a concentration in Latino/a Studies at Williams College in 2006. She completed her MPH in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University in 2009, where she also received her BS/MS in Nursing and FNP-BC. In 2015, she received her PhD at Columbia University School of Nursing. She was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health from 2015-2018 in Cardiovascular Epidemiology. Dr. Cortés leads an interdisciplinary research program focusing on cardiovascular disease in midlife women. She has a longstanding interest in understanding how women’s reproductive health may be an indicator of future cardiovascular disease risk, including measures of subclinical vascular disease. Another area of research focuses on racial/ethnic disparities in women’s reproductive and cardiovascular health, as well as the role of sociocultural factors.
Abstract:
Women’s reproductive health across the life course: A marker for cardiovascular disease risk in later life?
In this presentation Dr. Cortés will provide an overview of the current evidence linking reproductive health, from menarche thru postmenopause, to cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk in midlife women and beyond. Using examples from existing literature and her program of research, she will discuss potential mechanisms and interventions to address inequities in reproductive health and CVD.

We record as many seminars as possible. You can see previous events here.

Will Dow: Female Sex Workers in the Time of COVID: A Longitudinal Study in Tanzania
2021-10-29 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On October 29, 2021, Will Dow, the Director of the Center on the Economics and Demography of Aging and a Professor of Health Policy and Management at the University of California-Berkeley School of Public Health, will present “Female Sex Workers in the Time of COVID: A Longitudinal Study in Tanzania” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2021-2022 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.

Dow, a celebrated scholar of the economic aspects of health insurance, health behaviors, and health and demographic outcomes, joined the Berkeley faculty in 2004. Since 2005, he has been the founding associate director of the Berkeley Population Center and, since 2013, the director of the Center on the Economics and Demography of Aging. He has also served at the School as division head of Health Policy and Management and as the associate dean for research, and in 2018-19 served as Interim Dean of the School of Public Health. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and previously served as Senior Economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers.
Dow’s research contributes to improvements in health policy and healthy aging among vulnerable populations locally and globally. He has led teams analyzing California’s pathbreaking health insurance reforms and paid leave policies, as well as teams designing innovative behavioral economic strategies for preventing HIV and promoting behavior change such as smoking cessation. His global work includes serving as principal investigator of the premier team studying determinants of Costa Rican’s exceptional longevity, as well as projects in Cuba, Mexico, Tanzania and Japan.

Title and abstract of lecture will be available soon.
We record as many seminars as possible. You can see previous events here.

Julie Bynum: Accelerating population research and its impact to reduce Burden of Alzheimer’s disease
2021-11-05 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On November 5, 2021, Julie Bynum, the Margaret Terpenning Professor of Medicine in the Division of Geriatric Medicine, Research Professor in the Institute of Gerontology, Geriatric Center Associate Director for Health Policy and Research, and a member of the Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation at the University of Michigan, will present “Accelerating population research and its impact to reduce Burden of Alzheimer’s disease” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2021-2022 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Dr. Bynum is the Margaret Terpenning Professor of Medicine in the Division of Geriatric Medicine, Research Professor in the Institute of Gerontology, Geriatric Center Associate Director for Health Policy and Research, and a member of the Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation. She received her medical and public health degrees from Johns Hopkins, did her residency and chief residency at Dartmouth, and completed specialty training in Geriatric Medicine at Johns Hopkins. Dr. Bynum then joined the faculty at Dartmouth Medical School. She received prestigious awards from the Robert Wood Johnson Physician Faculty Scholar Program and the National Institute of Aging Beeson Scholar Program. She has been an Atlantic Philanthropies Health & Aging Policy Fellow, was a member of the National Academy of Medicine Committee that published “Vital Signs: Core Metrics for Health and Health Care Progress” and was recently a Deputy Editor of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. She is currently a member of the National Academy of Medicine Forum on Aging, Disability and Independence.
Dr. Bynum joined the University of Michigan in 2018 and was recently chosen to succeed Dr. Dick Simon as Vice Chair for Faculty Affairs for the Department of Internal Medicine. She currently leads a robust portfolio of research, has taken on a diverse group of junior faculty mentees across the instructional, clinical and research tracks, and provides primary and consultative care to older adults. Dr. Bynum is well known for leading interdisciplinary research teams to study questions about the complex drivers of quality and costs for older adults and how to improve health care policy and performance using national administrative data.
Title and abstract of lecture will be available soon.
We record as many seminars as possible. You can see previous events here.

Ashu Handa: Malawi’s Social Cash Transfer Programme (SCTP)
2021-11-12 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On November 12, 2021, Ashu Handa, the Lawrence I. Gilbert Distinguished Professor in the Department of Public Policy at UNC and a Faculty Fellow at the Carolina Population Center, will present his study results from Malawi as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2021-2022 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Handa is Lawrence I. Gilbert Distinguished Professor in the Department of Public Policy at the UNC and is a human resource economist specializing in household behaviours in developing countries. He has over 20 years’ experience assessing impacts of government poverty alleviation programs in Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa. He previously served as Chief of Social Policy and Economic Analysis, UNICEF Innocenti.
About the Transfer Project
The Transfer Project is a multi-country cash transfer research initiative. Established in 2008, the project is a collaborative network between UNICEF Innocenti, FAO, University of North Carolina, UNICEF Regional and Country Offices, national governments, and local research partners. The Transfer Project is a thought leader on cash transfers in Africa. We go beyond measuring typical economic outcomes to find out if and how cash transfers impact other aspects of people’s lives.
We record as many seminars as possible. You can see previous events here.

Giovanna Merli: The Changing Intellectual Landscape of Demography: A Computational Look at Published Scholarship, 1950-2020
2021-11-19 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On November 19, 2021, Giovanna Merli, Professor of Public Policy and Sociology at Duke University and a member of the Duke Global Health Institute, will present “The Changing Intellectual Landscape of Demography: A Computational Look at Published Scholarship, 1950-2020” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2021-2022 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Her research straddles three disciplinary realms: demography, contemporary Chinese society and global health. She focuses on a range of population and health issues in developing countries that intersect frontline public policy, such as the role of China’s population control program in lowering fertility preferences and fertility rates in China, the social and behavioral determinants of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases and the evaluation of methodological approaches to sample hard-to-reach and hidden populations at high risk of acquiring HIV/AIDS. Merli combines her passion for demography and her 20-years experience with living in, studying and conducting research in China in her most recent work. China is a very low HIV prevalence setting but infection rates are high in some population groups whose behaviors are driving the Chinese epidemic. Thus, it is crucial to understand the social and behavioral patterns that put population groups with different risk profiles in contact with each other. Merli’s work examines the social and behavioral factors that create conditions which lead individuals in China to acquire HIV infection. This work is crucial to inform the design of appropriate interventions to prevent further spread of infection. Merli also studies HIV/AIDS in another, very different setting of the global HIV epidemic, South Africa, where the AIDS morbidity and mortality crises are tantamount to a perturbation of the age structure. HIV/AIDS in South Africa mostly affects individuals in the mid-adult ages and her work focuses on understanding the consequences of this mortality and morbidity crisis for families and households. Research in China is my comparative advantage.
Abstract:
Much of what we know about the intellectual landscape of demography comes from subjective narratives authored by leaders in the field, whose reviews and observations are grounded in their broad knowledge of the field. Here we use bibliographic information from all articles in the journals Demography, Population Studies and Population and Development Review to survey the changing contours of the field over the past 70 years. We characterize the field by applying a two-pronged, data-driven approach from the sociology of science. The first uses natural language processing that lets the substance of the field emerge from the contents of publication records and applies social network analyses to identify groups of papers that talk about the same thing. The second uses bibliometric tools to capture demographers’ reliance on other disciplines. Our goals are to (a) identify the primary topics of demography since the discipline first gained prominence as an organized field; (b) assess changes in the field’s intellectual cohesion and the topical areas that have grown or shrunk; (c) examine how demographers place their work in relationship to other disciplines and our field’s visibility in the scientific literature. We discuss prospects for the continued scientific importance of demography as a standalone research field and its public visibility.
We record as many seminars as possible. You can see previous events here.

Miyuki Hino: In harm’s way: characterizing exposure to flooding in North Carolina
2022-01-14 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On January 14, 2022, Miyuki Hino, assistant professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning and an adjunct assistant professor in the Environment, Ecology, and Energy Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will present “In harm’s way: characterizing exposure to flooding in North Carolina” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2021-2022 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Miyuki Hino is an assistant professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning and an adjunct assistant professor in the Environment, Ecology, and Energy Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research examines the linkages between climate hazards, governance, and public policy to drive effective and equitable adaptation to climate change. Recent work has focused on the impacts of sea level rise, the effects of flood risk on property markets, and the use of managed retreat in adapting to climate change. Miyuki received a Ph.D. in Environment and Resources from Stanford University and a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Yale University.
We record as many seminars as possible. You can see previous events here.

Patrick Heuveline: CPC and the Future of Population Research
2022-01-21 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On January 21, 2022, Patrick Heuveline, Professor of Sociology at UCLA, will present “CPC and the Future of Population Research” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2021-2022 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
About Patrick Heuveline:
Most of my recent research has focused on the long-term consequences of the “Khmer-Rouge” regime, one of the most oppressive regimes in the second half of the 20th century. Yet, these past months have humbled and reminded me of my duty to listen to our community so that I can learn how to be the ally that they deserve in the fight for justice, including against anti-Black racism.
My substantive research interests center on how childhood family structures affect child wellbeing and the transition to adulthood.
My work to date is divided between comparative, secondary data analyses on single parenting or cohabitation in Western Nations, and an ongoing project in Cambodia, which began in 2000 and is designed to study family change since the Khmer-Rouge period (1975-79).
Methodologically, I am interested in developing and estimating models centered on population dynamics to represent phenomena that are intertwined with demographic processes. To date, the main applications have been on the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Eastern Africa and on the death toll of the Khmers Rouges’ regime.

Karen Benjamin Guzzo: CPC and the Future of Population Research
2022-02-04 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On February 4, 2022, Karen Benjamin Guzzo, Professor of Sociology at Bowling Green State University, will present “CPC and the Future of Population Research” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2021-2022 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Karen Benjamin Guzzo received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of North Carolina in 2003 and completed postdoctoral work at the University of Pennsylvania. She joined the faculty at Bowling Green State University in fall 2011. She serves as the Director of the Center for Family and Demographic Research, and her work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Health and Human Services. Trained as a family demographer and sociologist, most of her work examines what is considered “nontraditional” family behaviors. One line of research examines unintended fertility, looking at trends over time as well as the antecedents and consequences of unplanned births. A related line of work looks at nonmarital childbearing and multipartnered fertility, where individuals have children by different partners. Dr. Guzzo also studies trends in cohabitation, which has become increasingly common in the United States, but decreasingly likely to lead to marriage even as more cohabiting couples are raising children. Finally, she is interested in the measurement of fertility and family behaviors.

Sam Clark: CPC and the Future of Population Research
2022-02-10 15:30 - 17:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On February 10, 2022, Sam Clark, Professor of Sociology at The Ohio State University, will present “CPC and the Future of Population Research” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2021-2022 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
About Sam Clark:
I am a formal demographer who works on the demography and epidemiology of Africa and developing new methods for population sciences. Right now I am working on: * Improving the ‘verbal autopsy’ method used to quantify the burden of disease for populations without full coverage vital statistics systems – work with colleagues at The Ohio State University, the University of Washington, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the CDC, the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, the WHO, and the ‘Data for Health’ Initiative * Mapping child mortality at the subnational level through time using household survey data in countries without full coverage vital statistics systems – work with colleagues at the University of Washington and UNICEF *Developing new population indicator measurement strategies and statistical methods to implement them – work with colleagues at the University of Washington *Fertility and Mortality: variety of projects investigating levels and trends in fertility and mortality, mostly in Africa, and sometimes building models of age schedules of fertility and mortality that can be used widely as inputs to other analyses – work with a variety of colleagues at The Ohio State University and elsewhere * Coronavirus prevalence estimates and excess deaths for the state of Ohio and new methods for estimating disease prevalence from survey data with multiple tests – work with colleagues at The Ohio State University, the University of Washington, and University of California at Santa Cruz.

Deshira Wallace: Stress and sugar: Exploring the role of psychosocial stress on diabetes care in rural Dominican Republic
2022-02-11 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On February 11, 2021, Deshira Wallace,an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Behavior at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, will present “Stress and sugar: Exploring the role of psychosocial stress on diabetes care in rural Dominican Republic” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2021-2022 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.

Dr. Deshira Wallace is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Behavior at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. Her research is focused on examining the effects of structural and psychosocial stressors on cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes prevention and management among US Latines and in Latin America. Further, she uses an intersectionality framework to examine risk factors, coping behaviors, and chronic health outcomes, particularly among Latines and Latin Americans of African descent in an aim to further unpack health inequities within the Latine and Latin American population.
She works at the intersection of health sciences, social sciences, and the humanities to not only highlight health disparities, but to also critically examine how these disparities and inequities came about.

Aalyia Sadruddin: Death Matters: Notes on Aging and Time in Rwanda
2022-02-18 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On February 18, 2022, Aalyia Sadruddin, Assistant Professor in Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will present “Death Matters: Notes on Aging and Time in Rwanda” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2021-2022 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.

CANCELED: Rob Warren: CPC and the Future of Population Research
2022-02-21 15:30 - 17:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On February 21, 2022, Rob Warren, Professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota and the director of the Minnesota Population Center, will present “CPC and the Future of Population Research” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2021-2022 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
About Rob Warren:

I am a sociologist, demographer, population health scholar, and education policy researcher with experience and expertise in the collection, production, and dissemination of large-scale data products for research on health, aging, education, and labor force outcomes through my NIH- and NSF-funded work on High School and Beyond (HSB), the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS), the 1940 U.S. Census, and the IPUMS version of the Current Population Surveys (IPUMS-CPS). I am involved in the construction of the new 100% count historical Census data sets for IPUMS, and I have two ongoing NIH-funded projects to link early 20th century U.S. Census data to (1) several modern surveys of older Americans, including the HRS, PSID, and WLS and (2) recent mortality records from the Social Security Administration.
I am currently Co-Director, with Theresa Osypuk, of the NICHD-funded Training Program in Population Health Science (T32HD095134).
With Chandra Muller, Eric Grodsky, and Jennifer Manly I am conducting follow-up surveys of the High School and Beyond cohort (with support from 1R01AG058719-01A1). These ~25,500 people were first interviewed in high school in 1980. HS&B data – including a 2021-2022 follow-up focused on the early-life predictors of cognitive impairment – provide leverage in understanding the roles of education, skills, and childhood social circumstances in shaping work, health, and cognitive well-being at midlife.

Michael Esposito: Historical redlining and contemporary disparities in neighborhood life expectancy
2022-03-04 12:00 - 13:00
On March 4, 2022, Michael Esposito, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Washington University in St. Louis, will present “Historical redlining and contemporary disparities in neighborhood life expectancy” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2021-2022 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.

Professor Esposito’s research focuses on understanding the production of racialized disparities in population health.

Dr. Esposito investigates how broad, racialized social systems – and their constituent institutions – are configured in ways that layer privileges on white populations and hazards on BIPOC populations. His research ultimately seeks to understand how these systematically-distributed privileges and penalties arrive on population health.
This work includes studies that examine how the actions of race-cognizant institutions (e.g., law enforcement agencies) contribute to health disparities; research that considers how multiple racialized systems overlap to gate access to generative health contexts; and, projects which demonstrate how structural racism enters and distorts social processes that are foundational to well-being (e.g., the association among education and health).
Dr. Esposito uses contemporary statistical methods – Bayesian and counterfactual-based mediation approaches at the moment – across his work. Esposito’s research has appeared in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; American Journal of Sociology; American Journal of Public Health and more.

Jenna Nobles: Prenatal Demography: Implications for the Population Sciences
2022-03-25 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On March 25, 2022, Jenna Nobles, Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin, will present “Prenatal Demography: Implications for the Population Sciences” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2021-2022 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
About Jenna Nobles:
I am a professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. I study how people make decisions about migration and fertility and the implications of these decisions for population change. My current projects include the links between pregnancy survival and the health of cohorts, residential change and crime, anticipatory migration behavior, demographic responses to the diffusion of health risks, and the reconstruction of hidden population traits. My research has been funded by the NIH, NSF, William T. Grant Foundation, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. I am the director of the Center for Demography and Ecology, the training director for the Collaborative for Reproductive Equity, and on the executive committee of UW–Madison’s Health Disparities Research postdoctoral scholars program.

Ashton Verdery: COVID-19, bereavement, and downstream health challenges
2022-04-01 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On April 1, 2022, Ashton Verdery, Associate Professor of Sociology & Demography at Pennsylvania State University, will present “COVID-19, bereavement, and downstream health challenges” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2021-2022 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Dr. Verdery’s research focuses on social networks: how and why people are socially connected to each other and the consequences of those connections. Within this broad area, he is especially interested in demographic processes, specifically how population dynamics shape family, kinship, and social networks and how those networks in turn affect health and other population processes. Dr. Verdery is a graduate of CPC’s Training Program.
Abstract: Millions around the world are grieving the loss of loved ones from COVID-19, but prior research has not tested whether COVID-19-related bereavement presents unique health risks compared to other forms of bereavement. If bereavement from COVID-19 is more strongly associated with health challenges than bereavement more generally, large cohorts of newly bereaved individuals may create lasting population health challenges in heavily affected countries. Using population-based data and a pseudo-experimental, difference-in-difference research design, we test whether associations between family bereavement and depression differ when bereavement is caused by COVID-19 compared to other causes. Consistent with past scholarship, we find strong associations between family bereavement and depression and that self-reported depression appears to have decreased during the pandemic. However, our difference-in-difference estimates indicate that experiencing COVID-19-related family bereavement is more strongly associated with depression than non-COVID-19 forms of bereavement, a finding that is robust across numerous specifications related to duration since exposure and type of family member lost, but that shows some variation across subpopulations by gender, age, and severity of local COVID-19 mortality shock. This research raises new concerns about the long-run implications of the COVID-19 pandemic’s secondary impacts, further underscores the health risks associated with bereavement more generally, and highlights how acute mortality shocks of different sorts can create cascading population health challenges. Coauthors: Haowei Wang, Emily Smith-Greenaway, Shawn Bauldry, and Rachel Margolis.
We record as many seminars as possible. You can see previous events here.

Shaping an integrated response at the intersection of mental health, substance use, and HIV within the IeDEA consortium
2022-04-01 12:30 - 14:00
Kathryn Lancaster, PhD, MPH
Assistant Professor in Epidemiology
College of Public Health, The Ohio State University
Angela Parcesepe, PhD, MPH, MSW
Assistant Professor, Department of Maternal and Child Health, Gillings School of Global Public Health
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The International Epidemiology Databases to Evaluate AIDS (IeDEA) consortium was established by the NIH in 2006 to provide a rich resource for globally diverse HIV data to address HIV-related research questions that were not possible to answer with currently existing individual cohorts. The IeDEA consortium collects observational data representing over 2.2 million people living with and at risk for HIV contributed by clinical centers and research groups across 44 countries and 7 geographic regions.
In this talk, we will discuss the IeDEA’s consortium research at the intersection of mental health, substance use, and HIV treatment. Mental health and substance use disorders are among the most common comorbidities among people with HIV globally and have been associated with poor quality of life and HIV care continuum outcomes including delayed HIV diagnosis, suboptimal ART adherence, and virologic failure.
This talk will focus on mental health and substance use research priorities related to the implementation and scale up of ‘Treat All’ policies throughout sub-Saharan Africa, the integration of mental health and substance use services at HIV clinics throughout the IeDEA consortium, regional research examining the intersection of depression, heavy episodic drinking, and HIV disclosure among people with HIV in IeDEA Cameroon, and the recent launch of longitudinal cohorts of aging people with HIV (the IeDEA Sentinel Research Network) and adolescents and young adults with HIV (AYANI) in IeDEA. Finally, we will discuss future directions for research at the intersection of mental health, substance use, and HIV treatment in the IeDEA consortium and beyond.
Email darcommunications@nih.gov for passcode

April Women's Health Seminar - Global Women's Health
2022-04-21 11:30 - 12:30
Dr. Joanna Maselko, ScD (Associate Professor, Epidemiology; CPC Fellow), Dr. Clare Barrington, PhD (Associate Professor, Health Behavior; CPC Fellow), and Dr. Ben Chi, MD MSc (Professor, Obstetrics & Gynecology) will be presenting their research in the Women’s Health Research Seminar Series.
For more information, please visit https://www.med.unc.edu/pathology/mcp/pbts/womens-health-multidisciplinary-consortium/

David Meltzer: Improving Care for Patients at Increased Risk of Hospitalization: Translating the Comprehensive Care Physician Model from Theory to Practice and Policy
2022-04-22 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On April 22, 2022, David Meltzer will present as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2021-2022 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
David O. Meltzer is Chief of the Section of Hospital Medicine, Director of the Center for Health and the Social Sciences, and Chair of the Committee on Clinical and Translational Science at the University of Chicago, where he is Professor in the Department of Medicine, and affiliated faculty at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and the Department of Economics. Meltzer’s research explores problems in health economics and public policy with a focus on the theoretical foundations of medical cost-effectiveness analysis and the cost and quality of hospital care. Meltzer has performed randomized trials comparing the use of doctors who specialize in inpatient care (“hospitalists”). He is currently leading a Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Innovation Challenge award to study the effects of improved continuity in the doctor patient relationship between the inpatient and outpatient setting on the costs and outcomes of care for frequently hospitalized Medicare patients. He led the formation of the Chicago Learning Effectiveness Advancement Research Network (Chicago LEARN) that helped pioneer collaboration of Chicago-Area academic medical centers in hospital-based comparative effectiveness research and the recent support of the Chicago Area Patient Centered Outcomes Research Network (CAPriCORN) by the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI).
Meltzer received his MD and PhD in economics from the University of Chicago and completed his residency in internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Meltzer is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Lee Lusted Prize of the Society for Medical Decision Making, the Health Care Research Award of the National Institute for Health Care Management, and the Eugene Garfield Award from Research America. Meltzer is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, and past president of the Society for Medical Decision Making. He has served on several IOM panels, include one examining U.S. organ allocation policy and the recent panel on the Learning Health Care System that produced Best Care at Lower Cost. He also has served on the DHHS Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Healthy People 2020, the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) Methodology Committee, as a Council Member of the National Institute for General Medical Studies, and as a health economics advisor for the Congressional Budget Office.

Adolescent Romance in the Digital Age: Insights from a Mobile Diary Study
2022-04-28 15:00 - 16:30
The 2022 J. Richard Udry Distinguished Lecture will be presented by Dr. Marta Tienda, the Maurice P. During ’22 Professor in Demographic Studies, Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University, with joint affiliations in the Office of Population Research and The Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.
From 1997 to 2002, she served as director of the Office of Population Research. She is co-author and co-editor of several books, including The Hispanic Population of the United States (1987), Divided Opportunities (1988), The Color of Opportunity (2001), Youth in Cities (2002). Ethnicity and Causal Mechanisms (2005),Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies (2006), Hispanics and the Future of America (2006), and Africa on the Move (2006). She has published over 200 scholarly papers in academic journals and edited collections, in addition to numerous research bulletins and articles for a lay audience. She holds a BA in Spanish from Michigan State University and a MA and Ph.D., both in Sociology, from the University of Texas at Austin. She received honorary doctorates from The Ohio State University (2002), Lehman College (2003), and Bank Street College (2006). She will receive an honorary doctorate from her alma mater Michigan State University, once in-person activities resume.

2022 Add Health Users Conference
2022-07-11 - 2022-07-12 | Rizzo Center, 150 DuBose Home Ln, Chapel Hill, NC, 27517, United States
Join us on Monday, July 11th and Tuesday, July 12th for the 14th Add Health Users Conference at the Rizzo Center in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Registration is free and will be open from January 5th, 2022 through June 17th, 2022.
Abstracts can be submitted beginning Wednesday, January 5, 2022, via the Abstract Submission page. The deadline to submit abstracts is Monday, March 21, 2022, at 11:59 p.m. Eastern.
View the Call for Papers for more information and suggested topic areas. Questions? Email the conference organizers at addhealth_conference@unc.edu.

Justin Lessler, Running and Evaluating a Multi-team Scenario Modeling Effort for COVID-19: a year and a half of the Scenario Modeling Hub
2022-08-26 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On August 26, 2022, Justin Lessler will present “Running and Evaluating a Multi-team Scenario Modeling Effort for COVID-19: a year and a half of the Scenario Modeling Hub” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2022-2023 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Lessler is a professor in the Department of Epidemiology researching the dynamics and control of infectious disease, with particular interest in SARS-CoV-2, influenza, cholera and dengue. Justin works on the development and application of statistics, dynamic models and novel study designs to better understand and control infectious disease. In particular, he is interested in creating synergies between infection control practice, data collection and infectious disease dynamics.

Ted Mouw: Introduction to the Triangle RDC
2022-09-09 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On September 9, 2022, Ted Mouw (Sociology) will present “Introduction to the Triangle RDC” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2022-2023 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Mouw is a sociologist who studies labor markets, immigration, and social networks. His current research involves the mobility of low-wage workers, the economic incorporation of immigrants, and methods to collect samples from rare or hidden populations using social networks.

CANCELED: Caroline Thompson: Modernizing Metrics of Population Cancer Burden
2022-09-16 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
This event has been canceled and will be rescheduled at a later date.
On September 16, 2022, Caroline Thompson (Epidemiology) will present “Modernizing Metrics of Population Cancer Burden” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2022-2023 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Thompson‘s substantive research aims to describe and understand population-level patterns of cancer screening and diagnosis and to identify drivers of disparities in cancer-related healthcare delivery and outcomes across populations. Methodologically, she is interested in improving the valid research-use of complex, longitudinal sources of routine healthcare data (e.g., medical claims and electronic health records) and the use of quantitative bias analysis to evaluate the impact of suspected sources of systematic error in observational research.

Marcos Rangel, First Impressions Matter: Evidence from Elementary-School Teachers
2022-09-23 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On September 23, 2022, Marcos Rangel will present “First Impressions Matter: Evidence from Elementary-School Teachers” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2022-2023 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Rangel is an applied microeconomist. His research focuses on the patterns of accumulation of human capital with particular attention to the intra-family decision process (parents and children), to the impact of policies to foment education and health, and to racial differentials. His research has contributed to a better understanding of how the negotiations between mother and fathers, and also how families insert themselves into societies, influence the allocation of resources towards investment in human capital of children.

Abstract:

We study the empirical relevance of first impressions in the context of education. We find that teachers who begin their careers in classrooms with large White-Black incoming score differentials carry negative views into evaluations of future cohorts of Black students relative to their White classmates. Our evidence is based on novel data on blind evaluations and non-blind public school teacher assessments of fourth and fifth graders in North Carolina. Teachers’ perceptions are particularly sensitive to relatively low-performing Black students in early classrooms, but not to relatively high-performing Black students. Since teacher expectations can shape grading patterns and sorting into academic tracks as well as students’ own beliefs and behaviors, these findings suggest an important link between specific novice teachers’ initial experiences and the persistence of racial gaps in educational achievement and attainment.

CANCELED: Julia Behrman, Family Size Ideals in Flux? Change and Variation in the United States
2022-09-30 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On September 30, 2022, Julia Behrman (Northwestern) will present “Family Size Ideals in Flux? Change and Variation in the United States” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2022-2023 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Julia Behrman’s research investigates the causes and consequences of family change in a global perspective. Her research explores how the institution of the family shapes and is shaped by key social phenomenon in four main areas: (i) educational expansion; (ii) environmental change, natural disaster and climate shocks; (iii) expansion of women’s labor force participation; and (iv) migration. Much of her work is motivated by questions of power: who has power within families and how is it manifested? What events or experiences lead to changes in power dynamics within families? Do changes in family structures alleviate or perpetuate disadvantage between and within families?
Behrman’s research has received funding from the National Science Foundation and South African Medical Research Council and her work has received awards from American Sociological Association Sections on Education, Population, and Development; the Society for the Study of Social Problems; the Population Association of America; and the Sociologist AIDS Network. Prior to starting at Northwestern, she was a Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow in Sociology at Nuffield College, University of Oxford. She received her PhD from New York University in 2017.

Chuck Huber, Intro to Survey Statistics Using Stata
2022-10-07 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On October 7, 2022, Chuck Huber will present as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2022-2023 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Chuck Huber is Associate Director of Statistical Outreach at StataCorp and Adjunct Associate Professor of Biostatistics at the Texas A&M School of Public Health. In addition to working with Stata’s team of software developers, he produces instructional videos for the Stata Youtube channel, writes blog entries, develops online NetCourses and gives talks about Stata at conferences and universities. Most of his current work is focused on statistical methods used by behavioral and health scientists. He has published in the areas of neurology, human and animal genetics, alcohol and drug abuse prevention, nutrition and birth defects. Dr. Huber currently teaches introductory biostatistics at Texas A&M where he previously taught categorical data analysis, survey data analysis, and statistical genetics.
Abstract
This talk will review the concepts of probability and nonprobability sampling, sampling with and without replacement, and introduce the finite population correction factor. We introduce the major sampling designs, how to calculate sample weights, and how to use Stata’s “svyset” command to prepare data for analyses that account for the sampling design. We will then demonstrate how to analyze data with these characteristics.
