Population, Health, and Environment Transitions in the Developing World
2017-04-21 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | NC
David López-Carr, Professor of Department of Geography, UC Santa Barbara
I am co-Direct of the University of California Global Health Institute (UCGHI) Center of Expertise on Planetary Health. I am Professor of Geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where I direct the Human-Environment Dynamics Lab (HED) and lead the population, health, and environment research group for the Broom Center for Demography. I have lived, worked, and traveled in over 70 countries and speak Spanish, as well as some Portuguese, Italian, French, and very rudimentary Q’eqchí Maya. My research focuses on links among population, health, rural development, agriculture, and marine and forest resource use and conservation through ongoing projects in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. I have authored over 130 scientific publications. My research is conducted with colleagues and students thanks to several million dollars in funding from over 50 fellowships, grants, and awards from NASA, NSF, NIH, the Mellon and Fulbright Foundations, and numerous other sources. I am a Fellow of the NAS’ Kavli Frontiers of Science and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Before co-directing the Center for Planetary Health, I was an associate director for the UCGHI Center of Expertise on Migration and Health and Director of UCSB’s Latin American and Iberian Studies, where I was awarded outstanding graduate mentor. During 2015-15, I chaired the UC Faculty Senate Committee on Affirmative Action, Equity, and Diversity (UCAAD) and remain on several related committees in which I have helped author various plans, proposals and responses regarding policy as it relates to diversity and equity in higher education across the UCs.

A Cautionary Tale about Parental Involvement in Children's Schooling: How Parental Involvement Really Works
2017-09-08 12:00 - 13:00 | NC
Dr. Angel Harris, Professor of Sociology and Public Policy, Duke University
Professor Harris’s research interests include social inequality, policy, and education. He has published several articles and book chapters on the racial achievement gap that have appeared in various academic journals such as Social Forces, Sociology of Education, Social Science Quarterly, the Annals of the American and Political Social Science, and Sex Roles. Dr. Angel is the author of Kids Don’t Want to Fail (Harvard University Press), which provides an in-depth quantitative assessment of whether youth from marginalized groups purposefully resist schooling in both the United States and the United Kingdom. He is also the author of The Broken Compass: Parental Involvement with Children’s Education (Harvard University Press), which examines the link between parenting and youths’ schooling outcomes.
Professor Harris also serves as Director of the Research on Education and Development of Youth (REDY) Program.

Uncovering the Various Dimensions of Nutritional Disparities: Innovative Approaches and Public Health Implications
2017-09-15 12:00 - 13:00 | NC
Dr. Jennifer Poti, UNC-CH Research Assistant Professor, Nutrition
Dr. Poti is a nutritional epidemiologist interested in understanding the complexities of the US food supply, purchasing patterns, and dietary intake. She received a Bachelor of Science degree in Molecular and Cellular Biology from Johns Hopkins University and earned a PhD in Nutrition with a minor in Epidemiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has been at the Carolina Population Center as a member of the Global Food Research Program at UNC since 2010.
Dr. Poti’s research focuses on how shifts in the American diet away from whole foods and home cooking toward highly processed foods and foods prepared away-from-home (e.g. fast food and restaurant foods) are related to dietary quality and obesity among US children and adults. In addition, her work has focused on monitoring the US food supply and documenting long-term dietary trends among Americans. She is currently studying sources of sodium, saturated fat, and sugar in household food and beverage purchases and evaluating changes in the nutrient content of purchases that may occur as a result of manufacturers’ efforts to reformulate packaged foods and introduce new products. She also currently helps to lead her team’s Crosswalk project, which links nutrition label data to national dietary intake surveys in order to examine nutritional changes in the US food supply and assess potential impact on dietary intake of Americans. Dr. Poti’s work is particularly focused on understanding long-term food purchasing behaviors and diets within critical subpopulations (particularly non-Hispanic black, Hispanic, and low-income children and adults) who are at higher risk for obesity and obesity-related cardiometabolic disease. Her research evaluates the differential effects that recent changes in the US food supply have on diet disparities in the US.
Dr. Poti’s research has included successful interdisciplinary collaboration with experts in nutrition, epidemiology, and economics. She has formal training in epidemiology and analytic methods including regression modeling, analysis of categorical data and time-to-event analysis, advanced methods specifically in nutritional epidemiology and obesity epidemiology, and econometric modeling methods including longitudinal analysis of panel data and instrumental variable techniques. Dr. Poti’s research experience has provided her with a strong skill set for assessing and representing dietary data, including analysis at the nutrient, food, or food group level; creation of food grouping systems; and dietary pattern analysis using a priori indices or data-driven approaches. She has extensive experience working with large, population-based nationally representative sources of dietary data, including the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) dietary intake data and the Homescan commercial food purchase data. Dr. Poti’s published research produced results with important policy implications, including studies that helped to inform development of the USDA’s nutrition standards for the National School Lunch and School Breakfast programs as well as work that has been used to develop food procurement standards for the county of San Diego, CA.

300 Million Test Scores and What Do We Know? Educational Opportunity and Inequality in the US
2017-09-22 12:00 - 13:00 | NC
Dr. Sean Reardon,
Professor of Poverty and Inequality in Education and Professor (by courtesy) of Sociology
Director, Stanford Interdisciplinary Doctoral Training Program in Quantitative Education Policy Analysis
Sean Reardon is the endowed Professor of Poverty and Inequality in Education and is Professor (by courtesy) of Sociology at Stanford University. His research focuses on the causes, patterns, trends, and consequences of social and educational inequality, the effects of educational policy on educational and social inequality, and in applied statistical methods for educational research. In addition, he develops methods of measuring social and educational inequality (including the measurement of segregation and achievement gaps) and methods of causal inference in educational and social science research. He teaches graduate courses in applied statistical methods, with a particular emphasis on the application of experimental and quasi-experimental methods to the investigation of issues of educational policy and practice. Sean received his doctorate in education in 1997 from Harvard University. He is a member of the National Academy of Education and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is also a recipient of the William T. Grant Foundation Scholar Award, the National Academy of Education Postdoctoral Fellowship, and an Andrew Carnegie Fellow.

Of Men and Microbes: Social Determinants of the Microbiome
2017-09-29 12:00 - 13:00 | NC
Dr. Jenn Dowd is currently Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Global Health in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, King’s College London. She is also Research Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the CUNY School of Public Health, City University of New York, where she was a faculty member from 2008-2016. Her research covers topics in social epidemiology and population health focusing on the interaction of social and biological factors over the life course. Specific projects include understanding the role of stress and immune function in health inequalities, links between infectious and chronic disease, trends in educational attainment and mortality, and the impact of long-term obesity on health and functioning.
Dr. Dowd received her Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2004 with a focus on economics and demography from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Office of Population Research. From 2006-2008, Dr. Dowd was a Robert Wood Johnson Health & Society Scholar in the Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health at the University of Michigan

Activity Spaces and Youth Development: Preliminary Findings from the Adolescent Health and Development in Context Study
2017-10-06 12:00 - 13:00 | NC
Dr. Christopher Browning, Professor of Sociology, The Ohio State University
Christopher Browning is Distinguished Professor of Sociology and an affiliate of the Institute for Population Research at Ohio State University. His research focuses on neighborhood and activity space influences on health and adolescent development, emphasizing the causes and consequences of neighborhood social processes such as collective efficacy and network dynamics. He is the Principal Investigator of the Adolescent Health and Development in Context study.

Analyzing Longitudinal Qualitative Data: Stories of How and Why
2017-10-13 12:00 - 13:00 | NC
Dr. Clare Barrington, UNC-CH Associate Professor of Health Behavior, CPC Faculty Fellow
Professor Barrington’s research examines social and structural influences on health and health behaviors, with a focus on HIV among female sex workers (FSW), men who have sex with men (MSM), and transgender women in Latin America and Latino migrants in the United States. She has been conducting community-based research in the Dominican Republic for over 15 years. She led a mixed methods study of the social networks of the steady male partners of FSW in the Dominican Republic and most recently has been conducting research to understand and address social and structural determinants of outcomes along the HIV continuum of care among key populations in Santo Domingo. She is also leading an implementation science research project to decentralize HIV care and treatment for MSM in Guatemala City. In North Carolina, she has been studying the intersection between social networks, migration, and HIV among Mexican migrants. Dr. Barrington currently leads the qualitative formative research and evaluation of a study to promote early detection and linkage to care for HIV among Mexican MSM and transgender women in North Carolina. In addition to her HIV-focused work, Dr. Barrington leads the qualitative component of several mixed methods impact evaluations of health and development programs in Ghana and Malawi.

Mother's Employment Patterns and Consequences for Adolescent Outcomes
2017-10-27 12:00 - 13:00 | NC
Dr. Alexandra (Sasha) Killewald, Professor of Sociology, Harvard University
Alexandra (Sasha) Killewald is Professor of Sociology, as well as a faculty member in the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies. She received her Ph.D. in Public Policy and Sociology from the University of Michigan in 2011. Prior to her appointment at Harvard she was a researcher at Mathematica Policy Research. Her research takes a demographic approach to the study of social stratification. Much of her work focuses on the work-family intersection. She has published (with Margaret Gough) several articles on the ways in which earnings and employment shape women’s time in household labor. Her current research in this area explores the effect of marriage and parenthood on workers’ wages.
Another area of her research examines the influence of parental wealth on adult outcomes, including the role of parental wealth in explaining the Black-White wealth gap. She has also written (with Kerwin Charles and Erik Hurst) on assortative mating by parental wealth.
She is also the author (with Yu Xie) of Is American Science in Decline? (2012), which documents trends in the size of the American scientific workforce, public attitudes toward science, youth interest in science, the production of scientific degrees, and transitions to scientific employment, in addition to evaluating the position of American science on the international scene.

Data Collection for Network Sampling Approaches for Rare and Hard to Reach Populations: Lessons Learned
2017-11-03 12:00 - 13:00 | NC
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.

Framing the HIV Response For Those Most at Risk: The Granularity Challenge
2017-11-10 12:00 - 13:00 | NC
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.

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 | NC
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.

When Should Researchers Use Inferential Statistics When Analyzing Data on Full Populations?
2017-12-01 12:00 - 13:00 | NC
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.

Integrating Behavior, Biology and Environment to Study Complex Pathways from Urbanization to Health
2018-01-12 12:00 - 13:00 | NC
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.

CANCELED: Beyond Discrimination: Why Vigilance Matters for Population Health
2018-01-19 12:00 - 13:00 | NC
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.

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 | NC
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.

Stress and mental health in humanitarian crises: A biosocial approach to program evaluation with Syrian refugees
2018-02-02 12:00 - 13:00 | NC
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.

Surviving the Epidemic: Families and Well-Being, Malawi 1998—2013
2018-02-09 12:00 - 13:00 | NC
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.

Are CPCers Overweight(ing)?
2018-02-16 12:00 - 13:00 | NC
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.

Gender, Sexuality, Stigma and Population Health
2018-02-23 12:00 - 13:00 | NC
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.

AIDS: An Epidemic of Uncertainty
2018-03-02 12:00 - 13:00 | NC
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.

Planning Racial Inequality
2018-03-23 12:00 - 13:00 | NC
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.

The Battle Over Reproductive Rights in Texas: Did Research Matter?
2018-04-06 12:00 - 13:00 | NC
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.

Finite Mixture Models
2018-04-13 12:00 - 13:00 | NC
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.

America's Immigration Policy Fiasco
2018-04-19 15:00 - 17:00 | NC
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.

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.

Estimating the Risk of Police Involved Death by Race/Ethnicity and Place
2018-09-21 12:00 - 13:00 | NC
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.

Social Gradients in Gene Regulation in Nonhuman Primates
2018-09-28 12:00 - 13:00 | NC
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.

Monitoring Health Progress: From Global Estimates to Local Health Data
2018-10-05 12:00 - 13:00 | NC
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.

Early Childhood Development in Rural China: Evidence from the Qingling Cohort Study
2018-10-19 12:00 - 13:00 | NC
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.

Hypothesizing Upward: Have U.S. State Policies Widened Inequalities in Life Expectancy?
2018-10-26 12:00 - 13:00 | NC
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.
