Carolina Population Center

A Large-Scale Binational Survey of International Migrants from Rural Bangladesh
2019-02-01 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York)
On Friday, February 1, Randall Kuhn, PhD, will present A Large-Scale Binational Survey of International Migrants from Rural Bangladesh as part of the Carolina Population Center 2018-2019 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar series.
Randall Kuhn is a demographer and sociologist focused on the social determinants of health, program evaluation, global health, immigrant health and homelessness. In Bangladesh, he leads a 35-year evaluation of the effects of randomized child and reproductive health interventions on health and socioeconomic change across generations. He also leads a binational survey of the health and well-being of guest workers and their left-behind families. His cross-national research explores the effectiveness of global health policies and the role of improvements in health as a driver of social and political change. Kuhn’s methodological expertise includes longitudinal data analysis, experimental and quasi-experimental research design, forecasting, and integrated data systems. Kuhn founded the Goal 18 campaign for inclusive UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Kuhn is hosted by Carolina Population Center Fellow Robert (Bob) Hummer. Hummer is the Howard W. Odum Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is also co-PI of the Biosocial Training Program at the Carolina Population Center.
Friday, Feb 1
12-1
Carolina Square Room 2002
123 West Franklin Street
Location information is here.
PRESENTATION ABSTRACT
This study uses three rounds of survey data on respondents from the Matlab area of Bangladesh to compare the health of international migrants, interviewed in person and by phone, to that of non-migrants and internal migrants drawn from the same sample. To our knowledge, this is the largest binational panel study of migrant health yet conducted. We control for baseline conditions, account for self-selection and address the role of country of destination, return migration and duration. Results from a 2012-14 survey of migrants and non-migrants find that migrants fare better on measures of health that are reflective of self-selection (i.e. general health, smoking, positive dimensions of mental health). Migrants fare better or no worse on acute risks associated with the migration process such as mortality and injury. Yet they fare moderately worse on emerging chronic health factors such as obesity, hypertension and negative dimensions of mental health. These findings point to a model of health capital, in which migrants’ unique physical and emotional gifts are gradually eroded by the insults of the migration process. The seminar will include emerging results from a 2017-18 follow-up survey of migrants that explores the specific role of migrant recruitment, finance, social networks, occupational risk and context of integration in explaining migrant health trajectories.
Instructors: To arrange for class attendance, contact CPC at cpc@unc.edu by the Monday before the seminar
Streaming may be available and must be arranged at least one week in advance.
This seminar is part of the Carolina Population Center’s Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.

Early Childhood Development in Rural China: Evidence from the Qingling Cohort Study
2019-01-25 12:00 - 13:00
On Friday, January 25, Sean Sylvia, PhD, will present Early Childhood Development in Rural China: Evidence from the Qingling Cohort Study as part of the Carolina Population Center 2018-2019 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar series.
Sean Sylvia is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Gillings School of Global Public Health. Dr. Sylvia is a health and development economist whose research focuses on designing and evaluating innovative approaches to improve the delivery of health services in developing countries. His work relies heavily on fieldwork to collect primary data and most uses experimental or quasi-experimental methods to evaluate the causal effects of policies and interventions. In past and ongoing projects, he has studied the design of performance-based incentives for providers, school-based health and nutrition programs, early childhood health and development, and the quality of primary care in low-resource settings. His work has been published journals such as the BMJ, PLOS Medicine, the American Journal of Public Health, Health Affairs, and Health Policy and Planning. He has long-standing collaborations with researchers at a number of universities in China where he has directed several large-scale surveys and randomized trials. Prior to joining UNC, he worked as an Assistant Professor in the School of Economics at Renmin University of China.
Sylvia 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, Jan 25
12-1
Carolina Square Room 2002
123 West Franklin Street
Location information is here.
PRESENTATION ABSTRACT
A growing body of cross-disciplinary research suggests that human capital deficits in early life negatively affect later life outcomes and that interventions in early childhood can substantially improve health and productivity in adulthood. Given this evidence – and growing recognition that human capital development is an important mechanism affecting the persistence of poverty and inequality – investing in early childhood has risen on the policy agenda in a number of developing countries. The goal of the Qingling cohort study is to inform ECD policies in China. Across five waves of data collection, this study follows a cohort of more than 1800 children in rural areas of southern Shaanxi province from 6 months of age until age 5. Using this unique data, this talk will discuss the nutritional and developmental status of rural children and its evolution in early childhood. It will also present the short and medium-term results of two embedded randomized trials: one testing the effects of micronutrient supplementation and another intervention providing parenting support through home visits by cadres from China’s Family Planning Commission. Although the effects of micronutrient supplementation subside by age 2, we find persistent effects of the parenting intervention on cognitive outcomes. Data on parenting activities are used to explore behavioral mechanisms underlying these results.
Curriculum Vita (PDF)
Instructors: To arrange for class attendance, contact CPC at cpc@unc.edu by the Monday before the seminar
Streaming may be available and must be arranged at least one week in advance.
This seminar is part of the Carolina Population Center’s Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.

Mucking about with Maps: Integrating Remote Sensing and Archival Maps in West Africa
2019-01-18 12:00 - 13:00
On Friday, January 18, 2019, Colin West, PhD, will present Mucking about with Maps: Integrating Remote Sensing and Archival Maps in West Africa as part of the Carolina Population Center 2018-2019 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar series.
West is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a Faculty Fellow at the Carolina Population Center.
West 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, Jan 18
12-1
Carolina Square Room 2002
123 West Franklin Street
Location information is here.
PRESENTATION ABSTRACT
Land degradation is a complex global challenge that has historically attracted strong interdisciplinary scholarship. Especially in the world’s drylands, social and physical scientists have long collaborated on applied research to understand the drivers of desertification – land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas. In fact, the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD – 1996) explicitly recognizes it as a both a human and physical process. This presentation presents preliminary results on mapping both land degradation and rehabilitation in the Sahel of West Africa. Using archival maps of land-use/land-cover (LULC) and high-resolution satellite imagery, we explore how patterns of browning and greening vary across communities.
This talk will present three of our efforts to “muck around with maps” to identify areas of “greening” and “browning” in northern Burkina Faso. My colleague, Dr. Aaron Moody in the Dept. of Geography is a remote sensing expert and out effort has been guided by CPC’s pioneering work to “pixelize the social” and “socialize the pixel.” Northern Burkina Faso is a region where communities have invested heavily in widespread Soil and Water Conservation (SWC) measures. Experts have suggested that these local SWC investments may explain larger regional patterns of greening. The first part presents on our work combining a time series of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI and Rainfall Estimate (RFE) to identify areas of greening and browning in Burkina Faso. The second presents our work converting archival maps of Land-Use/Land-cover from Yatenga, Burkina Faso to GIS layers using remote sensing and image processing techniques. The last part presents our work mapping localized greening and browning through participatory mapping and high-resolution satellite imagery. These demonstrate the utility of combining ethnography with remote sensing analysis to better understand LULC processes and patterns.
Instructors: To arrange for class attendance, contact CPC at cpc@unc.edu by the Monday before the seminar
Streaming may be available and must be arranged at least one week in advance.
This seminar is part of the Carolina Population Center’s Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.

A Path towards Citizenship: The Effects of Early College High Schools on Criminal Convictions and Voting
2019-01-11 12:00 - 13:00
On Friday, January 11, Douglas Lauen, PhD, will present A Path towards Citizenship: The Effects of Early College High Schools on Criminal Convictions and Voting as part of the Carolina Population Center 2018-2019 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar series.
Lauen is an Associate Professor of Public Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an affiliated faculty member with the Department of Sociology and the Education Policy Initiative at UNC-Chapel Hill. Dr. Lauen’s work examines the effectiveness of educational policies, school types, and interventions on students and how these effects vary for traditionally underserved populations.
Lauen is hosted by Carolina Population Center Fellow Ted Mouw. Mouw is a Professor of Sociology. His research focuses on social mobility and factors that affect the upward mobility of low wage workers.
Friday, Jan 11
12-1
Carolina Square Room 2002
123 West Franklin Street
Location information is here.
PRESENTATION ABSTRACT
Formal schooling is critically important to human capital development and socialization. Those with more education enjoy many benefits – higher income, better health, and longer lives, to name just three. Education also produces positive externalities beyond individual benefits. Highly educated people are more likely to vote, become civically involved, and are less likely to commit crimes. For this reason, virtually all cultures subsidize education, although the quantity and nature of this support varies across countries. While we know a great deal about the broad effects of educational attainment on civic outcomes, we actually know very little about the effects of specific educational interventions on these types of outcomes, in part because long term follow-up studies are rare.
This talk will present early findings from a long term follow up study of early college high schools (ECHS) from North Carolina. ECHS are small schools of choice that provide students with the opportunity to earn, at no financial cost to them, two years of transferable college credit or an Associate’s degree while simultaneously satisfying high school graduation requirements. This promising intervention is aimed at smoothing the transition from high school to college for under-represented demographic groups. There are more than 85 ECHSs in North Carolina, although the model is implemented in more than 30 states in the U.S. as well.
The study team assembled personally-identified population level statewide administrative data on all NC high school students (including ECHS) and linked it to postsecondary enrollment and completion data (through in-state four-year and two-year institutions and the National Student Clearinghouse), incarceration records (from the NC Department of Public Safety), and voting records (from the NC Board of Elections). Together, these data comprise one of the most comprehensive data sources in the U.S. to study the effects of educational interventions.
Our results show that early colleges have positive effects on test scores and post-secondary degree attainment. The intervention also reduces the likelihood of incarceration and increases the likelihood of voting. We argue that the effects on crime are likely robust to unmeasured confounding, while the effects on voting most likely are not. Quasi-experimental impacts for some outcomes have been validated against impacts generated from a randomized controlled trial of the same intervention in a subset of the sites during the same time period.
CV for Douglas Lauen, PhD.
Instructors: To arrange for class attendance, contact CPC at cpc@unc.edu by the Monday before the seminar
Streaming may be available and must be arranged at least one week in advance.
This seminar is part of the Carolina Population Center’s Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.

Rethinking the Role Childhood SES Plays in Affecting Adult Health: Integrating Existing Theories with a Life Course Perspective on the Disablement Process
2018-11-30 12:00 - 13:00
On Friday, November 30th, Scott Lynch, PhD, will present Rethinking the Role Childhood SES Plays in Affecting Adult Health: Integrating Existing Theories with a Life Course Perspective on the Disablement Process as part of the Carolina Population Center 2018-2019 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar series. Lynch is a Professor of Sociology and the Director of Training in the Population Research Institute at Duke University. His substantive research focuses on life course and cohort patterns in social inequalities in health in the US, by education, income, race, and region. His methodological research focuses on Bayesian methods in demography.
Lynch 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.
PRESENTATION ABSTRACT
Mounting evidence indicates that childhood socioeconomic status (SES) has long-term effects on health in later adulthood. However, findings are mixed regarding how it influences health. Specifically, it is unclear whether childhood SES affects adult health only through its role in influencing adult SES or exerts an independent influence on adult health, net of adult SES. Drawing from life course perspectives on the disablement process, we advance and test a theory of “progressive mediation” which suggests that the extent to which childhood SES exerts an independent influence on adult health depends upon the seriousness of the health outcome being considered. We argue that childhood status can have strong residual influences on lesser health conditions and precursors to more serious conditions, while having weak, or no, residual influences on more serious health conditions. Lesser health conditions and precursors arise relatively early in adulthood, but adult socioeconomic resources provide a number of resources that can interrupt or postpone the disease development and disablement process that otherwise may stem from early adulthood conditions. Using longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Study, we find robust support for this theory.
Instructors: To arrange for class attendance, contact Kate Allison (akalliso@email.unc.edu) by the Monday before the seminar
Streaming may be available and must be arranged at least one week in advance.
This seminar is part of the Carolina Population Center’s Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.

Networks, Diffusion and Inequality
2018-11-16 12:00 - 13:00
On Friday, November 16th, Filiz Garip, PhD, will present Networks, Diffusion and Inequality as part of the Carolina Population Center 2018-2019 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar series. Garip is a Professor of Sociology at Cornell University. She is affiliated with the Center for the Study of Inequality and the Center for Population Research at Cornell. Her research lies at the intersection of migration, economic sociology and inequality.
Garip is hosted by Carolina Population Center Fellow Barbara Entwisle. Entwisle is the Kenan Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She served as CPC Director for eight years (2002-2010) and as CPC’s Training Program Director for six of those years (2002-2008). Entwisle has resumed her role as CPC’s Training Director (2017-date). Entwisle studies social context and demographic and health behavior and outcomes.
PRESENTATION ABSTRACT
Prior work defines network externalities (where the value of a practice is a function of network alters that have already adopted the practice) as a mechanism exacerbating social inequality under the condition of homophily (where advantaged individuals poised to be primary adopters are socially connected to other advantaged individuals). This work does not consider consolidation (correlation between traits), a population parameter that is essential to network formation and diffusion. Using a computational model, we first show that prior findings linking homophily to segregated social ties and to differential diffusion outcomes are contingent on high levels of consolidation. Homophily, under low consolidation, is not sufficient to exacerbate existing differences in adoption probabilities across groups, and can even end up alleviating inter-group inequality by facilitating diffusion. We then apply this idea to the empirical case of Mexico-U.S. migration. We show that homophily and consolidation allow us to capture the structural constraints to diffusion, and explain why some newly-emerging migrant communities eventually come to surpass historic migrant regions in levels of migration.
Curriculum Vita (PDF)
Instructors: To arrange for class attendance, contact Kate Allison (akalliso@email.unc.edu) by the Monday before the seminar
Streaming may be available and must be arranged at least one week in advance.
This seminar is part of the Carolina Population Center’s Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.

The Socioeconomic Effects of China's Forest Restoration and Conservation Programs
2018-11-09 12:00 - 13:00
On Friday, November 9th, Conghe Song, PhD, will present The Socioeconomic Effects of China’s Forest Restoration and Conservation Programs as part of the Carolina Population Center 2018-2019 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar series. Song is Professor and Associate Chair of Geography at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is also the Director of the Graduate Certificate Program of Geographic Information Sciences. His research focuses on understanding the social-ecological consequences of human-environment interactions in the context of climate change.
Professor Song is hosted by Carolina Population Center Fellow Clark Gray. Gray is an Associate Professor of Geography at the UNC-Chapel Hill. His research focuses on population and human-environment interactions in the developing world.
PRESENTATION ABSTRACT
China’s economy had witnessed double digit growth following the adoption of open and reform policy in the late 1970s. However, China’s natural environment did not improve with the economy. In fact, China’s eco-environmental conditions went in the opposite direction with the economy for decades, leading to devastating natural disasters in the late 1990s. As a result, the Chinese government implemented a series of forest restoration and conservation programs to improve the natural environment. The Conversion of Cropland to Forest Program (CCFP) and the Ecological Welfare Forest Program (EWFP) are two of them. CCFP program is the largest reforestation program to date in the world, involving 32 million households and 120 million people in 25 of the 31 provinces in China. China’s forest cover increased 3% as a result. EWFP is a program that preserves natural forests that provide essential ecosystem services. Both CCFP and EWFP are essentially payment for ecosystem services programs. Despite nearly two decades of implementation, the programs’ socioeconomic as well as their ecological effects are not well understood. In this talk, I will present the recent findings from a US-China collaborative project studying the impacts of CCFP on the dynamics of the coupled natural and human systems in Anhui, China. Riding the tide of overall economic growth in China, both CCFP and EWFP have been successful in converting and preserving the land-use, and have exerted profound impacts on rural residents’ livelihoods. I will focus on the program effects on cropland abandonment, fuel wood use and rural out migration in this talk.
Curriculum Vita (PDF)
Instructors: To arrange for class attendance, contact Kate Allison (akalliso@email.unc.edu) by the Monday before the seminar
Streaming may be available and must be arranged at least one week in advance.
This seminar is part of the Carolina Population Center’s Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.

Should We Tax Soda? An Overview of Theory and Evidence
2018-11-02 12:00 - 13:00
On Friday, November 2nd, Hunt Allcott, PhD, will present Should We Tax Soda? An Overview of Theory and Evidence as part of the Carolina Population Center 2018-2019 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series. Allcott is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, an Associate Professor of Economics at New York University, a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a Co-Editor of the Journal of Public Economics. He is a Scientific Director of ideas42, a think tank that applies insights from psychology and economics to business and policy design problems, an Affiliate of Poverty Action Lab, a network of researchers who use randomized evaluations to answer critical policy questions in the fight against poverty, and a Faculty Affiliate of E2e, a group of economists, engineers, and behavioral scientists focused on evaluating and improving energy efficiency policy. He was also a Contributing Author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report.
Professor Allcott is hosted by Carolina Population Center Fellows Shu Wen Ng and Lindsey Smith Taillie. Ng is an Associate Professor and Taillie is a Research Assistant Professor, both in the Department of Nutrition at UNC-Chapel Hill.
PRESENTATION ABSTRACT
Taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) are growing in popularity and have generated an active public debate. Are they a good idea? If so, how high should they be? Are such taxes regressive? Americans and some others around the world consume a remarkable amount of SSBs, and the evidence suggests that this generates significant health costs. Building on recent work by Allcott, Lockwood, and Taubinsky (2018) and others, we review the basic economic principles for an optimal sin tax on SSBs. The optimal tax depends on (1) externalities: uninternalized costs to the health system from SSB consumption; (2) internalities: costs consumers impose on themselves by overconsuming sweetened beverages due to poor nutrition knowledge or lack of self-control; and (3) regressivity: how much the financial burden and the internality benefits from the tax fall on the poor. We then summarize the empirical evidence on the key parameters that determine how large the tax should be, which suggests that SSB taxes can be welfare enhancing. We end with seven concrete suggestions for policymakers considering an SSB tax.
Curriculum Vita (PDF)
Instructors: To arrange for class attendance, contact Kate Allison (akalliso@email.unc.edu) by the Monday before the seminar
Streaming may be available and must be arranged at least one week in advance.
This seminar is part of the Carolina Population Center’s Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.

Hypothesizing Upward: Have U.S. State Policies Widened Inequalities in Life Expectancy?
2018-10-26 12:00 - 13:00
On Friday, October 26th, Jennifer Karas Montez, PhD, will present Hypothesizing Upward: Have U.S. State Policies Widened Inequalities in Life Expectancy? as part of the Carolina Population Center 2018-2019 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series. Montez is a Professor of Sociology, the Gerald B. Cramer Faculty Scholar of Aging Studies, and Co-Director of the Policy, Place, and Population Health Lab at Syracuse University. Her work examines the large and growing inequalities in U.S. adult mortality since the early 1980s. She is particularly interested in why trends in mortality have been most troubling for women, low-educated adults, and states in the South and Midwest.
Professor Montez is hosted by Carolina Population Center Fellow Robert (Bob) Hummer. Hummer is the Howard W. Odum Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is also co-PI of the Biosocial Training Program at the Carolina Population Center.
PRESENTATION ABSTRACT
In the United States, life expectancy is increasingly being shaped by where we live and how much schooling we have completed. Why? Most speculation has focused on “micro-level” explanations, such as individuals’ personal choices and lifestyle behaviors. This presentation will discuss the importance of macro-level explanations, particularly U.S. state policies. Weaving together results from several recent and ongoing studies, this presentation will build the case that the diverging policy contexts of U.S. states—resulting from decades of deregulation, devolution of political authority from federal to state levels, and state preemption laws—have likely played a critical role in the widening inequalities in life expectancy.
Curriculum Vita (PDF)
Instructors: To arrange for class attendance, contact Kate Allison (akalliso@email.unc.edu) by the Monday before the seminar
Streaming may be available and must be arranged at least one week in advance.
This seminar is part of the Carolina Population Center’s Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.

Early Childhood Development in Rural China: Evidence from the Qingling Cohort Study
2018-10-19 12:00 - 13:00
On Friday, October 19th, Sean Sylvia, PhD, will present Early Childhood Development in Rural China: Evidence from the Qingling Cohort Study as part of the Carolina Population Center 2018-2019 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Sean Sylvia is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Gillings School of Global Public Health. Dr. Sylvia is a health and development economist whose research focuses on designing and evaluating innovative approaches to improve the delivery of health services in developing countries. His work relies heavily on fieldwork to collect primary data and most uses experimental or quasi-experimental methods to evaluate the causal effects of policies and interventions. In past and ongoing projects, he has studied the design of performance-based incentives for providers, school-based health and nutrition programs, early childhood health and development, and the quality of primary care in low-resource settings. His work has been published journals such as the BMJ, PLOS Medicine, the American Journal of Public Health, Health Affairs, and Health Policy and Planning. He has long-standing collaborations with researchers at a number of universities in China where he has directed several large-scale surveys and randomized trials. Prior to joining UNC, he worked as an Assistant Professor in the School of Economics at Renmin University of China.
PRESENTATION ABSTRACT
A growing body of cross-disciplinary research suggests that human capital deficits in early life negatively affect later life outcomes and that interventions in early childhood can substantially improve health and productivity in adulthood. Given this evidence – and growing recognition that human capital development is an important mechanism affecting the persistence of poverty and inequality – investing in early childhood has risen on the policy agenda in a number of developing countries. The goal of the Qingling cohort study is to inform ECD policies in China. Across five waves of data collection, this study follows a cohort of more than 1800 children in rural areas of southern Shaanxi province from 6 months of age until age 5. Using this unique data, this talk will discuss the nutritional and developmental status of rural children and its evolution in early childhood. It will also present the short and medium-term results of two embedded randomized trials: one testing the effects of micronutrient supplementation and another intervention providing parenting support through home visits by cadres from China’s Family Planning Commission. Although the effects of micronutrient supplementation subside by age 2, we find persistent effects of the parenting intervention on cognitive outcomes. Data on parenting activities are used to explore behavioral mechanisms underlying these results.
Curriculum Vita (PDF)
Instructors: To arrange for class attendance, contact Kate Allison (akalliso@email.unc.edu) by the Monday before the seminar
Streaming may be available and must be arranged at least one week in advance.
This seminar is part of the Carolina Population Center’s Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.

Monitoring Health Progress: From Global Estimates to Local Health Data
2018-10-05 12:00 - 13:00
On Friday, October 5th, 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 from 1997-2002, 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 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 Global 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.
PRESENTATION ABSTRACT
The regular monitoring of key health indicators from mortality and morbidity to universal health coverage (UHC) progress is critical for the assessment of progress and performance, the development of strategies and plans, and the implementation of programs. The supply of global health estimates has increased dramatically over the past decade, with ever-increasing granularity, supported by sophisticated statistical modeling. Countries are gradually making progress in improving their health information systems, assisted by data digitization. How can we best bring these developments together? This presentation will focuses on the current balance between global estimates production and local data strengthening, the new challenges of the UHC 2030 agenda, and the progress in using health facility data for subnational monitoring.
Instructors: To arrange for class attendance, contact Kate Allison (akalliso@email.unc.edu) by the Monday before the seminar
Streaming may be available and must be arranged at least one week in advance.
This seminar is part of the Carolina Population Center’s Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.

Social Gradients in Gene Regulation in Nonhuman Primates
2018-09-28 12:00 - 13:00
On Friday, September 28th, Jenny Tung, PhD, will present Social Gradients in Gene Regulation in Nonhuman Primates as part of the Carolina Population Center 2018-2019 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Tung is an Associate Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology and Biology at Duke University. She is also a Faculty Research Scholar with Duke Population Research Institute (DuPRI). Dr. Tung is a participating faculty member with the Carolina Population Center’s Biosocial Training Program.
Tung is hosted by Carolina Population Center Fellow Allison Aiello. Aiello is a Professor of Epidemiology and the Program Leader of Social Epidemiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Gillings School of Global Public Health. Dr. Aiello is PI for the Detroit Neighborhood Health Study (DHNS), the “Niños study,” and the Infectious Links between Psychosocial Stress and Aging Study. She is also Program Director and Co-PI for the Biosocial Training Program at CPC.
PRESENTATION ABSTRACT
In social species, including our own, interactions with other members of the same species powerfully shape the environment that animals face each day. These interactions mediate the evolutionary costs and benefits of group living, and also contribute to social gradients in health. Here, I will present our recent research on the impact of social interactions at the molecular and organismal levels. Using a five-decade data set from wild baboons in Kenya, we demonstrate that social adversity in early life combines with ecological pressures to profoundly shape individual survival. Meanwhile, in captive rhesus macaques, we show that social status causally alters immune function, including the response to infection. Finally, by taking advantage of data sets from both species, we show that social status is consistently linked to variation in the regulation of innate immunity and inflammation-related genes. However, the strength and direction of these associations depend on sex, cellular environment, and the nature of the social hierarchy in which they arise.
Instructors: To arrange for class attendance, contact Kate Allison (akalliso@email.unc.edu) by the Monday before the seminar
Streaming may be available and must be arranged at least one week in advance.
This seminar is part of the Carolina Population Center’s Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.

Estimating the Risk of Police Involved Death by Race/Ethnicity and Place
2018-09-21 12:00 - 13:00
On Friday, September 21, Hedwig (Hedy) Lee, PhD, will present Estimating the Risk of Police Involved Death by Race/Ethnicity and Place as part of the Carolina Population Center 2018-2019 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Lee is a Professor of Sociology at Washington University in St. Louis. She also holds a courtesy joint appointment at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis, and is an Affiliate Professor of the Center for Research on Demography and Ecology and Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle. Her recent work examines the impact of structurally rooted chronic stressors, such as mass incarceration, on health and health disparities.
Lee is hosted by Carolina Population Center Fellow Kathleen Mullan Harris. Harris is the James E. Haar Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Adjunct Professor of Public Policy and the Director and Principal Investigator of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), a longitudinal study of more than 20,000 teens who are being followed into young adulthood.
Professor Lee is a former Carolina Population Center predoctoral trainee (2003-2009). During her predoctoral traineeship, she researched racial health disparities from a life course perspective using Add Health data.
PRESENTATION ABSTRACT
We used novel data on police-involved fatalities and Bayesian models to estimate mortality risk for Black, Latino, and White men for all US counties by Census division and metropolitan area type. Police kill, on average, 2.8 men per day. Police were responsible for about 8% of all homicides with adult male victims between 2012 and 2018. Black men’s mortality risk is between 1.9 and 2.4 deaths per 100 000 per year, Latino risk is between 0.8 and 1.2, and White risk is between 0.6 and 0.7. Police homicide risk is higher than suggested by official data. Black and Latino men are at higher risk for death than are White men, and these disparities vary markedly across place.
Curriculum Vita (PDF)
Instructors: To arrange for class attendance, contact Kate Allison (akalliso@email.unc.edu) by the Monday before the seminar
Streaming may be available and must be arranged at least one week in advance.
This seminar is part of the Carolina Population Center’s Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.

CANCELED: Biological Mediators and Moderators of Social Disadvantage
2018-09-14 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
This seminar has been cancelled due to weather.
On Friday, September 14, Colter Mitchell, PhD will present Biological Mediators and Moderators of Social Disadvantage as part of the Carolina Population Center 2018-2019 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Mitchell is Research Assistant Professor of the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and is a Faculty Associate of the University of Michigan Population Studies Center.
Mitchell is hosted by Carolina Population Center Fellow Guang Guo. Guo is Dr. George and Alice Welsh Distinguished Professor of Sociology. Guo is a CPC Training Program Alum: he was a Postdoctoral Fellow from 1991-1993.
Professor Mitchell is part of an NIH initiative to explore social epigenomics related to health disparities.
Friday, Sept. 14
12-1
Carolina Square Room 2002
123 West Franklin Street
Location information is here.
PRESENTATION ABSTRACT
Measures of social disadvantage such as poverty, parental incarceration, and family instability have well documented health and behavioral consequences for children, which can even reach into adulthood. Social disadvantage likely operates through both social and biological mechanisms; however, only in the last decade and a half have we seen a rapid increase in the integration of social science and biology. I investigate biological correlates of social disadvantage using the Fragile Family and Child Wellbeing Study (n=4898), a population-based sample of children born in hospitals in 20 cities in the US. Families have been studied at birth and ages 1,3,5,9, and 15, with additions of genetic, epigenetic, and neuroimaging data collected more recently. Due to the study design the sample is racially and ethnically diverse and has lower SES levels than most large national studies- making it exceptionally rare within biosocial research. Of particular interest here are the correlations with genomic (polygenic scores, and changes in epigenetic profiles and telomere length) and functional and structural neuroimaging measures with the effect of cumulative disadvantage and timing of social disadvantage.
Research project: “Epigenetic Mediation of Adverse Social Context on Stress Response, Socioemotional Development, and Health in a Population-based Study of Minority and Low SES Children and Adolescents”
Selected publications
Instructors: To arrange for class attendance, contact Kate Allison (akalliso@email.unc.edu) by the Monday before the seminar
Streaming may be available and must be arranged at least one week in advance.
This seminar is part of the Carolina Population Center’s Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.

America's Immigration Policy Fiasco
2018-04-19 15:00 - 17:00
Dr. Douglas Massey, Professor, Department of Sociology, Princeton University
Douglas S. Massey is the Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology at Princeton University where he also directs the Office of Population Research.

Finite Mixture Models
2018-04-13 12:00 - 13:00
Chirayath M. Suchindran, Professor, Department of Biostatistics, UNC-Chapel Hill
Chirayath M. Suchindran is a professor and director of graduate admissions in the Department of Biostatistics at the Gillings School. He is a mathematical demographer and serves as the leading biostatistician in the statistical services core of the Carolina Population Research Center (CPC). His primary research interest is in developing methodology for demographic analysis. He is also engaged in collaborative research with population researchers. His primary role in this collaborative research effort is to identify state-of-the art methodology for addressing substantive issues.
He has published extensively on the theory and applications of multistate life tables. His research also focuses on the incorporation of survey design in estimating complex statistical models. The published works include adjusting for unequal selection probability in multilevel models, analysis of interval censored complex survey data in the context of time to obesity (published in The Journal of the American Medical Association), female-male disparity in obesity prevalence (published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition), intergenerational profile of socioeconomic (dis)advantage and obesity during the transition to adulthood (published in Demography), and discordance in national estimates hypertension in young adults (published in Epidemiology). His recent publications also include a methodological paper on analysis of spatial temporal data and on statistical measures to determine the importance biomarkers in determining health outcomes. As a biostatistician trained in statistical demography Dr. Suchindran makes significant contributions to the training of population researchers. He was the program director of an NIH-funded population training program (T32 –HD 07237) “Research Training in Population statistics” from 1972 -2008. For his significant contributions to the field of demography, Dr. Suchindran was elected a fellow of the American Statistical Association in 1995.

The Battle Over Reproductive Rights in Texas: Did Research Matter?
2018-04-06 12:00 - 13:00
Joe Potter, Professor of Sociology, Population Research Center, the University of Texas at Austin
Joe Potter’s interests lie in the areas of reproductive health, population and development, and demographic estimation. He is the Principal Investigator of the Texas Policy Evaluation Project, an eight-year foundation funded investigation to evaluate the impact of the reproductive health legislation enacted by the Texas Legislature. Through June 2012, he was also P.I. of the Border Contraceptive Access Study (BCAS), a seven-year project on oral contraceptive use along the US-Mexico border in El Paso, Texas funded by NICHD.

Planning Racial Inequality
2018-03-23 12:00 - 13:00
Allan M. Parnell, Ph.D., Vice President, Cedar Grove Institute for Sustainable Communities
Allan M. Parnell, Ph.D., is Vice President of the Cedar Grove Institute for Sustainable Communities and a Senior Fellow at the Kenan Institute at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. For the last decade, Dr. Parnell has served as an expert witness in civil rights and fair housing cases across the country, including Jerry R. Kennedy, et al., v. The City of Zanesville, et al., BBC Baymeadows, LLC v. City of Ridgeland, and Inclusive Communities Project v. Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, the 2015 Supreme Court decision upholding the use of disparate impact evidence in fair housing litigation.
Dr. Parnell received his A.B with Honors in Geography, his M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology, all from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Prior to his current positions, Dr. Parnell was a Visiting Research Associate at the East-West Population Institute in Honolulu, a Research Associate for the Committee on Population at the National Academy of Sciences, and a member of the sociology faculty at Duke University. He has been the Principal Investigator on grants from the National Institute on Aging and the National Institute on Child Health and Human Development. Dr. Parnell can be contacted at allanmparnell@gmail.com and at 919 563 5899.

AIDS: An Epidemic of Uncertainty
2018-03-02 12:00 - 13:00
Jenny Trinitapoli, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Chicago
Dr. Trinitapoli’s training and background is in two areas: social demography & the sociology of religion. Bridging these two fields, her work features the demographer’s characteristic concern with data and denominators and an insistence on connecting demographic processes to questions of meaning. She asks a lot of questions about data quality, and she may or may not be addicted to data collection.
She has written extensively on the role of religion in the AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa, but religion permeates her research, even when it isn’t present as a variable. Since 2008 she has been the principal investigator of Tsogolo la Thanzi (TLT)—an ongoing longitudinal study of young adults in Malawi. Demographers use terms like “relationship instability” and “fertility trajectories,” but very plainly: TLT asks how young adults negotiate relationships, sex, and childbearing with a severe AIDS epidemic swirling around them. The TLT research centre, located in Balaka (Southern Malawi), is staffed by over two dozen talented locals and supported by grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Gender, Sexuality, Stigma and Population Health
2018-02-23 12:00 - 13:00
Dr. Kerith Conron, Blachford-Cooper Distinguished Scholar and Research Director at the Williams Institute, UCLA
Kerith Conron is the Blachford-Cooper Distinguished Scholar and Research Director at the Williams Institute. She is a social and psychiatric epidemiologist whose work focuses on documenting and reducing health inequities that impact sexual and gender minority (LGBTQ) populations. Dr. Conron is committed to altering the landscape of adversity and opportunity for the most marginalized LGBTQ communities through collaborative activities that impact the social determinants of health. She is co-PI of the newly funded (NICHD/NIHMD) Sexual Orientation/Gender Identity, Socioeconomic Status, and Health across the Life Course study and previously has been supported by NIMHD to conduct community-based participatory research with LGBTQ youth of color and their parents and by NICHD to train scholars in LGBTQ population health research. She has been active in LGBT health for over 15 years – serving on the first Steering Committee of the National Coalition for LGBT Health and as the first coordinator of the Office of LGBT Health for the City of Boston. Dr. Conron earned her doctorate from the Harvard School of Public Health and MPH from the Boston University School of Public Health. Her publications appear in the American Journal of Public Health, Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, and Psychological Medicine. Her expertise and commentary have been featured by major media outlets including the New York Times, the Associated Press, and National Public Radio.

Are CPCers Overweight(ing)?
2018-02-16 12:00 - 13:00
Dr. Kenneth A Bollen, Henry Rudolph Immerwahr Distinguished Professor, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience and Department of Sociology, UNC at Chapel Hill
Kenneth A. Bollen is Henry Rudolph Immerwahr Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience and Department of Sociology. He is the head of the Methods Core and a Fellow at the Carolina Population Center at UNC. From 2000 to 2010, he was the Director of the H.W. Odum Institute for Research in Social Science at UNC. Bollen’s current research is on the development of statistical methodology for the social and behavioral sciences with applications in population and health studies. He has published over 140 papers and is the author of Structural Equations with Latent Variables (Wiley), coauthor of Latent Curve Models: A Structural Equation Perspective (Wiley), and coeditor of Testing Structural Equation Models (Sage). Google scholar lists over 84,000 citations to these works (http://goo.gl/Dpa2X).
Bollen is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the American Statistical Association. He is Chair of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Advisory Committee for the Directorate of the Social, Economic, and Behavioral Sciences. He is President of the Society of Multivariate Experimental Psychology. He was a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and past Chair of the Social, Economic, and Political Sciences Section K of the AAAS. He also served on the Board of Trustees of the National Institute of Statistical Sciences. In 2000 he won the Paul F. Lazarsfeld Memorial Award for Distinguished Contributions in the Field of Sociological Methodology. Recently, Harvard University, the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of Bologna (Bologna, Italy), and RTI International hosted him as a Visiting Scholar.
Bollen received his B.A. from Drew University (1973) and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Brown University (1975, 1977). He was a Research Scientist at General Motors Research Labs (1977-1982) and an assistant professor at Dartmouth College (1982-1985) prior to joining UNC (1985). The National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, USAID, and other organizations have funded his research.

Surviving the Epidemic: Families and Well-Being, Malawi 1998—2013
2018-02-09 12:00 - 13:00
Dr. Hans-Peter Kohler, Frederick J. Warren Professor of Demography, University of Pennsylvania
Abstract
Across Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA), a remarkable cohort is reaching middle and older ages: those who have survived the AIDS epidemic. Nobody could escape an epidemic that was devastating for both its health and social implications. Were the survivors of this cohort just lucky? Or did they systematically differ in critical characteristics? What promoted survival and resilience in such a terrible context, and what influenced well-being among the survivors and their families? And for all of these questions, did the epidemic cause persistent divergences in families’ well-being because misery reinforced itself? These and related questions about “Surviving the Epidemic” (STE) are being studied by exploiting an unusually rich data source: the Malawi Longitudinal Study of Families and Health (MLSFH) cohort, 1998—2013.
Speaker’s Bio
Hans-Peter Kohler, Ph.D., is a social and economic demographer whose current research focuses on health, demography and social change in developing and developed countries. A key characteristic of his research is the attempt to integrate demographic, economic, sociological and biological approaches in empirical and theoretical models of health and demographic behaviors. In his prior work, he investigated the role of social and sexual networks for HIV risk perceptions and HIV infection risks, the causal effects of education on health, the consequences of learning one’s HIV status on risky behaviors, the interrelations between marriage and sexual relations in developing countries, the role of social interaction processes for fertility and AIDS-related behaviors, and the determinants and consequences of low fertility in developed countries. His research combines extensive knowledge about the determinants of health, fertility/mortality, HIV/AIDS, and related economic behaviors in developing and developed countries with considerable experience in sophisticated econometric and demographic analyses, including analyses with controls for endowment and unobserved determinants of individuals’ behaviors, models of population and disease dynamics, randomized designs and integration of social science and biomedical research methods. He has extensive experience in the design and implementation of large-scale data collection in sub-Saharan contexts. He has been awarded the Clifford C. Clogg Award for Early Career Achievement by the Population Association of America for my interdisciplinary work on fertility and health, and have been honored with Otis Dudley Duncan Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Social Demography by the American Sociological Association. He has been a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies at the Norwegian Academy of Science, served as the president of the Society of Biodemography and Social Biology, and was engaged as lead-paper author in the Copenhagen Consensus Project to evaluate policies to prevent the sexual transmission of HIV (2011, with Behrman), reduce population growth (2012), and the post-2015 UN Development Goals in the area of Population and Demography. He served as the Chair of Penn’s Ph.D. Program in Demography NICHD T32 Training Program for several years, and has been the PI of the Malawi Longitudinal Study of Families and Health (MLSFH) since 2007.

Stress and mental health in humanitarian crises: A biosocial approach to program evaluation with Syrian refugees
2018-02-02 12:00 - 13:00
Dr. Catherine Panter-Brick, Professor of Anthropology, Health, and Global Affairs; Public Health, Yale University
Catherine Panter-Brick is Professor of Anthropology, Health, and Global Affairs at Yale University, and the Medical Anthropology Senior Editor for Social Science & Medicine. Her research addresses issues of risk and resilience in contexts of war, displacement, famine, and poverty. She has directed more than forty interdisciplinary research projects in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, the Gambia, Jordan, Nepal, Niger, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tanzania, and the United Kingdom. She works to develop effective partnerships between academic scholars, health policy-makers, and humanitarian practitioners. For her work in humanitarian areas, she received the Lucy Mair Medal, awarded by the Royal Anthropology Institute of Great Britain and Ireland to honor excellence in the application of anthropology to the relief of poverty and distress and to the active recognition of human dignity.
Professor Panter-Brick has authored over 140 scientific publications in the biomedical, health, and social sciences and coedited seven books, most recently Medical Humanitarianism: Ethnographies of Practice (Pennsylvania Press 2015) and Pathways to Peace (MIT Press, 2014). Initially schooled in French, she received her MA degree in Human Sciences and her PhD in Biological Anthropology from Oxford University. She has worked with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and was based at Durham University for twenty years, before moving to Yale University where she directs the Program on Conflict, Resilience, and Health and the Program on Stress and Family Resilience.

Considering the linkages between climate and health: A focus on women and children's health in sub-Saharan Africa
2018-01-26 12:00 - 13:00
Dr. Kathryn Grace, Assistant Professor of Geography, Environment and Society, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Kathryn Grace is an Assistant Professor of Geography, Environment and Society at the University of Minnesota. Her research is focused broadly on the areas of Population Geography, Demography, and Health. Professor Grace’s current research highlights the role of context in various aspects related to maternal and child health—primarily reproductive health and family planning decision-making. Her approach builds on theories found in demography and public health with the goal to bring an alternative perspective to issues related to women’s health and development. Through the use of a quantitative, mixed-disciplinary approach, she examines the ways individual, family, and household outcomes are conditioned by place, including both the culture and the natural environment. In addition, her work explores underlying theories of development and resource use and access, building on her personal experiences and observations from time spent in poor countries and communities.

CANCELED: Beyond Discrimination: Why Vigilance Matters for Population Health
2018-01-19 12:00 - 13:00
Due to the travel uncertainty associated with the recent snowfall and winter weather, the January 19 CPC interdisciplinary seminar is cancelled. We plan to reschedule Professor Lee’s talk during fall 2018.
Dr. Hedwig Lee, Professor of Sociology, Washington University in St. Louis
Hedwig (Hedy) Lee is a Professor of Sociology at Washington University in St. Louis. She received her BS in Policy Analysis from Cornell University in 2003 and her PhD in Sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2009. After receiving her PhD, she was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar at the University of Michigan, School of Public Health from 2009 to 2011. She also holds a courtesy joint appointment at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis and is an Affiliate Professor at the University of Washington Department of Sociology in Seattle. She is broadly interested in the social determinants and consequences of population health and health disparities. Her recent work examines the impact of chronic stress on health and health disparities.

Integrating Behavior, Biology and Environment to Study Complex Pathways from Urbanization to Health
2018-01-12 12:00 - 13:00
Dr. Annie Green Howard, Clinical Assistant Professor of Department of Biostatistics, UNC-Chapel Hill
Annie Green Howard has considerable expertise in high-dimensional exposure modeling, longitudinal and multilevel modeling, multivariate, pathway and structural equation modeling, latent variables, and missing data. A central theme of her research has been modeling of longitudinal exposures and outcomes, with substantive focus in the area of cardiovascular disease and obesity. She serves as the lead biostatistician on several projects at the Carolina Population center including research investigating complex pathways to cardiovascular disease in both Add Health and the China Health and Nutrition Study.

When Should Researchers Use Inferential Statistics When Analyzing Data on Full Populations?
2017-12-01 12:00 - 13:00
Dr. Rob Warren (Professor of Sociology, University of Minnesota)
Professor Warren is 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. He is currently involved in the construction of the new 100% count historical Census data sets for IPUMS. Dr. Warren has worked intensively on WLS data infrastructure since his first week in graduate school; for example, he designed and programmed the employment history and job characteristics modules of every survey of the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) administered since the mid-1990s. Dr. Warren also serves as the Director of the Minnesota Population Center.

From ‘Opt Out’ to Blocked Out: The Challenges for Labor Market Re-Entry After Family-Related Employment Lapses
2017-11-17 12:00 - 13:00
Dr. Kate Weisshaar (UNC-CH Assistant Professor of Sociology; CPC Faculty Fellow)
Kate Weisshaar is a sociologist whose research focuses on gender and economic stratification processes within families, workplaces, and society, with an interest in developing critical tests of causal processes by leveraging data and quantitative methods. She is particularly interested in how macro-level inequalities in the labor force are reproduced through micro- and meso-level processes in the workplace, in families, and in the work-family intersection. Her recent work examined labor market outcomes associated with intermittent labor force participation, with a specific examination of how periods of unemployment or “opting out” of work for family reasons affect labor market outcomes upon re-entry, such as hiring prospects, wages, and occupational prestige. Kate received her PhD in Sociology from Stanford University, and has been an Assistant Professor in the Sociology Department at UNC-Chapel Hill and a Faculty Fellow at the Carolina Population Center since 2016.

Framing the HIV Response For Those Most at Risk: The Granularity Challenge
2017-11-10 12:00 - 13:00
Dr. Sharon Weir (UNC-CH Research Assistant Professor of Epidemiology; CPC Faculty Fellow)
Professor Weir’s research interests relate to methods that identify and characterize local sexual and injecting drug use networks in resource poor settings. This information is key in preventing the spread of HIV. Not only are many people asymptomatic, which contributes to a hidden epidemic, but persons occupying central positions in HIV transmission networks are often members of mobile, stigmatized, and hard-to-reach populations. Because many people do not know their HIV status and because many of those who are infected are hidden, there is a need for methods based on sound epidemiologic science that use technology appropriate to the local setting to uncover local transmission networks in a way that leads to effective, ethical, and evidence-based prevention.

Data Collection for Network Sampling Approaches for Rare and Hard to Reach Populations: Lessons Learned
2017-11-03 12:00 - 13:00
Dr. Giovanna Merli (Professor of Public Policy and Global Heath, Duke University)
M. Giovanna Merli is Professor of Public Policy, Sociology and Global Health in the Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University. She is also the Director of the Duke Population Research Center (DPRC). She holds a PhD in demography from the University of Pennsylvania. Before going to Duke, she was on the faculty of the Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Merli has a strong background in the design, conduct and analyses of surveys fielded among Chinese populations in China and Chinese immigrant destinations. Her NIH-funded data collection efforts have relied on conventional probability sampling designs as well as venue-based and link-tracing sampling approaches to recruit samples of rare and hidden populations. She has also designed ego-centric network modules for the Chinese general population, which she has used to estimate the behavioral, social and relational determinants of prevalence of HIV and other STIs in China. In recent work, she has evaluated the performance of Respondent-Driven Sampling among populations at risk of HIV/STIs. Currently, in collaboration with Ted Mouw, she is fielding, testing and evaluating an innovative sampling approach for rare populations, Network Sampling with Memory, among Chinese immigrant populations in the U.S., Tanzania and France.
Dr. Ted Mouw (Associate Professor of Sociology; CPC Faculty Fellow)
Mouw’s current research on social mobility focuses on factors that affect the upward mobility of low wage workers. In his paper with Arne Kalleberg, “Stepping Stone versus Dead End Jobs: Occupational Pathways out of Working Poverty in the United States, 1996-2012”, he uses data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to test whether the accumulation of task-specific skills increases the rate of upward mobility for low-wage workers. In a grant from the Russell Sage Foundation, he is linking the SIPP data to county-level data on labor demand shocks in order to analyze the role that structural factors play in the upward mobility of low-wage workers. This research builds on previous work that analyzed trends in between-occupation inequality and the impact of job mobility on changes in inequality. In the next five years, he plans to extend this work into a book-length project on working poverty and the social mobility of low-wage workers.
