Carolina Population Center

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Schedule of Events

Time
Activity

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

1:30 pm – 3:50 pm

Hacking Begins

3:50 pm – 4:00 pm

Team Set-Up for Presentations in 2002 CSQ

4:00 pm – 5:15 pm

Team Presentations

5:15 pm – 5:30 pm

Judges Deliberate

5:30 pm

Event Wrap-Up

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CANCELED: Becky Pettit: Illusions of Justice: Crime and Punishment in a Model Reform State
2020-03-27 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
This event has been canceled. We will update as soon as we can reschedule for later this year.
On March 27, 2020, Becky Pettit, the Barbara Pierce Bush Regents Professorship of Liberal Arts, University of Texas at Austin, will present “Illusions of Justice: Crime and Punishment in a Model Reform State” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Becky Pettit is the Barbara Pierce Bush Regents Professor of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a sociologist, trained in demographic methods, with interests in social inequality broadly defined. She is the author of two books and numerous articles which have appeared in the American Sociological Review, the American Journal of Sociology, Demography, Social Problems, Social Forces and other journals. Her book, Invisible Men: Mass Incarceration and the Myth of Black Progress (Russell Sage Foundation 2012), investigates how decades of growth in America’s prisons and jails obscures basic accounts of racial inequality. Her first book, co-authored with Jennifer Hook of the University of Southern California, Gendered Tradeoffs: Family, Social Policy, and Economic Inequality in Twenty-One Countries (Russell Sage Foundation 2009) was selected as a Noteworthy Book in Industrial Relations and Labor Economics in 2010.
Pettit has been the recipient of many honors and awards. Her paper “Black-White Wage Inequality, Employment Rates, and Incarceration” (with Bruce Western of Columbia University) received the James Short paper award from the American Sociological Association Crime, Law, and Deviance Section. Another paper “Mass Imprisonment and the Life Course: Race and Class Inequality in U.S. Incarceration” (with Western) received Honorable Mention from the American Sociological Association Sociology of Law Section Article Prize Committee. A related paper (also with Hook) was a finalist for the 2006 Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award for Excellence in Work-Family Research. She was elected to membership in the Sociological Research Association in 2018.
Pettit has been a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation, Northwestern University, and the American Bar Foundation, and was a recipient of a mentored research development award (K01) from the National Institutes of Health (NICHD) for her work on “Institutionalizing Inequality: Gender, Work and Family.” Pettit’s research has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, MSNBC, and numerous other media outlets. She has been invited to speak at the White House, the Congressional Budget Office, the Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Census Bureau, and many colleges and universities.
Professor Pettit teaches courses on social inequality, methods, and statistics. She edited Social Problems, the official journal of the Society of the Study of Social Problems, from 2011-2014. She holds a Ph.D. in sociology from Princeton University and a B.A. in sociology from University of California at Berkeley.
Presentation Abstract:
Abstract: Two decades of crime declines in the United States and significant and sustained policy attention to criminal justice reform has led some observers to suggest that the U.S. is reconsidering its experiment in mass incarceration. Most Americans are at the lowest risk of victimization in a generation and some states, like Texas, have attracted outsized attention for reform efforts to reduce the number of people held in state prisons and jails, decrease sentence lengths and time served, and offer community-based supervision and non-custodial sanctions. However, and despite significant rhetoric of criminal justice reform, incarceration and criminal justice contact in the United States more broadly – and the Lonestar state specifically – remains historically and comparatively high. Texas sanctions more people each year through the criminal justice system than live in Wyoming, Vermont, North Dakota, Alaska, South Dakota, Delaware, and Montana combined. In this paper, I examine whether and how contemporary criminal justice policy in Texas influences exposure to the criminal justice system. I consider how recent reforms in criminal justice policy and practice impact different demographic groups, influence accounts of inequality, and align with principles of justice.
We record as many videos as possible. You can see previous events here.
Instructors: To arrange for class attendance, contact CPC (cpc@unc.edu) by the Monday before the seminar.
The Carolina Population Center hosts a weekly Friday lecture on a topic that enhances our understanding of population-related changes. The 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminars will feature talks related to aging trajectories, health behavior, the Zika virus, and the beverage tax – among other topics.
All seminars are held from 12:00 – 1:00 pm in Carolina Square Room 2002 at 123 W. Franklin St. unless otherwise indicated.

CANCELED: Nancy Krieger: Structural Racism and People's Health: History and Context Matters
2020-04-03 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
This event has been canceled. We will update as soon as we can reschedule for later this year.
On April 3, 2020, Nancy Krieger, Professor of Social Epidemiology, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, and Director of the HSPH Interdisciplinary Concentration on Women, Gender, and Health., Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, will present “Structural Racism and People’s Health: History and Context Matters” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Nancy Krieger is Professor of Social Epidemiology, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Director of the HSPH Interdisciplinary Concentration on Women, Gender, and Health. She has been a member of the School’s faculty since 1995. Dr. Krieger is an internationally recognized social epidemiologist (PhD, Epidemiology, UC Berkeley, 1989), with a background in biochemistry, philosophy of science, and history of public health, plus 30+ years of activism involving social justice, science, and health. In 2004, she became an ISI highly cited scientist, a group comprising “less than one-half of one percent of all publishing researchers, with her ranking reaffirmed in the 2015 update.” In 2013, she received the Wade Hampton Frost Award from the Epidemiology Section of the American Public Health Association, and in 2015, she was awarded the American Cancer Society Clinical Research Professorship. In 2019, Dr. Krieger was ranked as being “in the top 0.01% of scientists based on your impact” for both total career and in 2017 by a new international standardized citations metrics author database, including as #1 among the 90 top scientists listed for 2017 with a primary field of public health and secondary field of epidemiology (https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000384)
Dr. Krieger’s work addresses three topics: (1) conceptual frameworks to understand, analyze, and improve the people’s health, including the ecosocial theory of disease distribution she first proposed in 1994 and its focus on embodiment and equity; (2) etiologic research on societal determinants of population health and health inequities; and (3) methodologic research on improving monitoring of health inequities. In April 2011, Dr. Krieger’s book, Epidemiology and the People’s Health: Theory and Context, was published by Oxford University Press. This book presents the argument for why epidemiologic theory matters. Tracing the history and contours of diverse epidemiologic theories of disease distribution from ancient societies on through the development of — and debates within — contemporary epidemiology worldwide, it considers their implications for improving population health and promoting health equity. She is also editor of Embodying Inequality: Epidemiologic Perspectives (Baywood Press, 2004) and co-editor, with Glen Margo, of AIDS: The Politics of Survival (Baywood Publishers, 1994), and, with Elizabeth Fee, of Women’s Health, Politics, and Power: Essays on Sex/Gender, Medicine, and Public Health (Baywood Publishers, 1994). In 1994 she co-founded, and still chairs, the Spirit of 1848 Caucus of the American Public Health Association, which is concerned with the links between social justice and public health.
We record as many videos as possible. You can see previous events here.
Instructors: To arrange for class attendance, contact CPC (cpc@unc.edu) by the Monday before the seminar.
The Carolina Population Center hosts a weekly Friday lecture on a topic that enhances our understanding of population-related changes. The 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminars will feature talks related to aging trajectories, health behavior, the Zika virus, and the beverage tax – among other topics.
All seminars are held from 12:00 – 1:00 pm in Carolina Square Room 2002 at 123 W. Franklin St. unless otherwise indicated.

CANCELED: Courtney Boen: Embodying Racism: Patterns and Determinants of Racial Disparities in Health and Aging
2020-04-17 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
This event has been canceled. We will update as soon as we can reschedule for later this year.
On April 17, 2020, Courtney Boen, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania, will present “Embodying Racism: Patterns and Determinants of Racial Disparities in Health and Aging” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series. Boen is an alumni of the CPC Training Program.
Boen’s research focuses primarily on the social determinants of population health inequality, with particular attention to the social factors producing racial and socioeconomic health inequities. Utilizing biomarkers of physiological functioning and cellular aging and a variety of analytic techniques, her work aims to improve scientific understanding how macro-level social inequality “gets under the skin” to produce health disparities from birth through late life. Currently, she is engaged in several projects that examine how exposure to racism-related stress in various domains of social life (e.g., in neighborhoods, in contacts with the criminal justice system, and in interpersonal interactions) contributes to racial disparities in pre-disease biological markers of health and aging. Her other ongoing and previous studies further investigate the social factors producing racial and socioeconomic health disparities. She has examined how disparities in socioeconomic conditions—including differential access to wealth and exposure to early-life socioeconomic disadvantage—contribute to population health inequality. I have also collaborated on projects that assess how access to social relationships and exposure to relationship strain contribute to disparities in health and disease risk. Her research has been published in Social Science and Medicine, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Biodemography and Social Biology, and the Journal of Aging and Health.
Presentation Abstract:
The divergence and persistence of Black-White health gaps from mid- and late life has led scholars to hypothesize that Black Americans may experience accelerated aging relative to Whites due to racial differences in social exposures. Still, the social and biological processes undergirding racial disparities in health and mortality remain to be better understood. In this talk, I bridge insights from critical race theory and biodemography to examine the life course patterns and determinants of Black-White disparities in health and aging. First, using data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), I assess Black-White gaps in biological aging and further examine the role of life course socioeconomic and stress exposures in producing racial disparities in biological age acceleration. Next, drawing on work using a variety of survey and social media data, I show how exposure to vicarious and cultural racism-related stress may also play an essential—but largely underestimated role—in producing Black-White patterns of health and aging. Together, findings from these studies show that, while life course socioeconomic exposures are critical drivers of racial health disparities, socioeconomic resources cannot “buy” Black Americans the health protections associated with whiteness. In order to more fully capture the role of racism in shaping population health inequality, research on racial disparities in health and aging must expand beyond individual measures of social exposures to also integrate measures reflecting the interactional, cultural, and structural nature of racism.
The Carolina Population Center hosts a weekly Friday lecture on a topic that enhances our understanding of population-related changes. The 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminars will feature talks related to aging trajectories, health behavior, the Zika virus, and the beverage tax – among other topics.
All seminars are held from 12:00 – 1:00 pm in Carolina Square Room 2002 at 123 W. Franklin St. unless otherwise indicated.
We record as many videos as possible. You can see previous events here.
Instructors: To arrange for class attendance, contact CPC (cpc@unc.edu) by the Monday before the seminar.

Tonia Poteat: Black Trans Lives Matter: Understanding and Addressing Embodied Inequalities
2020-09-11 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York)
On September 11, 2020, Tonia Poteat, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Medicine and Faculty Fellow at the Carolina Population Center, will present “Black Trans Lives Matter: Understanding and Addressing Embodied Inequalities” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2020-21 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series. This year, the CPC Interdisciplinary Research Seminars will be open to both CPC members and Social Epidemiology program members.

Description
After a brief overview of Dr. Poteat’s research on LGBTQ health inequities, the majority of this presentation will focus on her current studies that use qualitative, quantitative, and clinical methods to elucidate mechanisms responsible for stigma-induced health inequities and identify effective interventions to reduce them.
Biography
Tonia Poteat, PhD, PA-C, MPH, is Assistant Professor of Social Medicine at UNC-Chapel Hill, as well as core faculty in the UNC Center for Health Equity Research. After completing her PhD at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Poteat served for two years in the Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator as the Senior Advisor for Key Populations. Since returning to academia in 2014, Dr. Poteat’s research, teaching, and practice have focused on HIV and LGBT health disparities with particular attention to the health and well-being of transgender communities. Her current work attends to the health consequences of stigma based on multiple marginalized identities. Dr. Poteat is a certified HIV Specialist by the American Academy of HIV Medicine and has devoted her clinical practice to providing medically appropriate and culturally competent care to members of the LGBTQ community as well as people living with HIV. In 2018, she was selected for the Simmons Scholars Program which provides support for underrepresented faculty in medicine.
This event will be held on Zoom and is closed to the public. We will post a recording after the talk. You can see previous events here.

Chantel Martin: Embodying Place: Neighborhood Environment and Health Disparities
2020-09-25 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York)
On September 25, 2020, Chantel Martin, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Faculty Fellow at the Carolina Population Center, will present “Embodying Place: Neighborhood Environment and Health Disparities” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2020-21 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series. This year, the CPC Interdisciplinary Research Seminars will be open to both CPC members and Social Epidemiology program members.
Chantel Martin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Faculty Fellow at the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As an epidemiologist, Dr. Martin’s research seeks to uncover social and biological mechanisms of health disparities across the life course. By identifying the long-term health effects of social stressors, her multidisciplinary research aims to improve health among racial/ethnic minorities and eliminate health disparities. Dr. Martin’s work currently investigates how social and environmental factors during early life stages, such as pregnancy, childhood, and adolescence, become biologically embodied to impact risk of chronic disease and health disparities within and across generations. Her research is currently supported by two NIMHD grants: the K99/R00 Pathways to Independence Award and the Social Epigenomics Research Focused on Minority Health and Health Disparities program. Chantel received her PhD in Epidemiology from UNC Chapel Hill and her MSPH from UNC Charlotte.
Her talk will explore biological embodiment of the social environment, its influence on cardiometabolic health, and potential biological mechanisms that may partially explain associations.
This event will be held on Zoom and is closed to the public. We will post a recording after the talk. You can see previous events here.

Tyson Brown: Structural Racism and Health Stratification in the U.S.: Connecting Theory to Measurement
2020-10-16 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York)
On October 16, 2020, Tyson Brown, an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and the director of the Center on Health & Society at Duke University, will present “Structural Racism and Health Stratification in the U.S.: Connecting Theory to Measurement” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2020-21 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series. This year, the CPC Interdisciplinary Research Seminars will be open to both CPC members and Social Epidemiology program members.
Abstract:
Despite the centrality of structural explanations for understanding racialized inequality, less than one percent of studies on the link between race and health have focused on structural racism. Moreover, there has often been a disconnect between the conceptualization of structural racism in the race theory literature and the measurement strategies used in population health research. This study advances the field by 1) synthesizing literatures on macro-level structural racism and population health to provide a theoretical framework for understanding the links between them, 2) measuring macro-level structural racism in U.S. states across multiple domains, including political participation, education, economics, housing, and the judicial system, and 3) quantifying the effects of structural racism on multiple health outcomes among middle-aged and older Blacks and Whites. We use administrative data measuring state-level racial stratification linked to geocoded individual-level demographic and health data from the Health and Retirement Study (N=9,126). Results show that structural racism is associated with worse health for Blacks but not Whites. By distilling the central tenets of structural racism theories and concretizing them in a way that improves our ability to measure structural racism, this study demonstrates the utility of macro-level approaches to understanding the deleterious impact of racism on health.
Biography:
Dr. Brown’s program of research examines the who, when, and how questions regarding ethnoracial inequalities in health and wealth. He has authored numerous articles in leading sociology and population health journals, and his research contributions have been recognized with awards from the American Sociological Association. Brown is also the recipient of Duke University’s Thomas Langford Lectureship Award. In addition, he has been awarded funding for his training and research from the Robert Wood Johnson and Ford Foundations as well as the National Institutes of Health.
Brown is currently working on several projects that investigate macro-level factors and psychosocial mechanisms that underlie social inequalities in health. The first project, “Structural Racism and Health Stratification in the U.S.: Connecting Theory to Measurement,” is on the conceptualization and measurement of state-level structural racism and its effects on population health. The second project uses robust analytic techniques to quantify the contributions of socioeconomic adversity and stress processes to ethnoracial inequalities in health.
Professor Brown is actively engaged in service at the university and national level. He founded and co-organizes Duke’s Writing and ReseArch Productivity (WRAP) Group, which aims to promote excellence in scholarship and support Black faculty by creating protected writing time and a space that enhances faculty inclusion and sense of community. Brown has also served in leadership position within professional organizational as well as on the editorial boards of top journals such as Social Forces, Social Psychology Quarterly, Journals of Gerontology, and the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.
This event will be held on Zoom and is closed to the public. We will post a recording after the talk. You can see previous events here.

Margaret Hicken: Landscapes of racial dispossession and control: Cultural and structural racism and population health inequities
2020-11-13 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York)
On November 13, 2020, Margaret Hicken, a Research Associate Professor at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research Survey Research Center, will present “Landscapes of racial dispossession and control: Cultural and structural racism and population health inequities” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2020-21 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series. This year, the CPC Interdisciplinary Research Seminars will be open to both CPC members and Social Epidemiology program members.
Abstract:
The health inequalities between Black and White Americans have been well-documented for decades, with much of the population and public health literature still focused on individual-level behaviors and health care. A small but growing literature has called for an emphasis on structural racism as the root driver of these inequalities, but often focus solely on single institutional aspects of US structure, on contemporary forms of racism, and/or on the psychosocial impact of racism. In the Landscapes of Racial Dispossession and Control project, historical and contemporary forms of racial violence are linked through notions of cultural racism to result in sustained racial health inequalities. Cultural racism is composed of our shared values, ideologies, and beliefs of what it means to be American. These value systems then shape the ways our interconnected and symbiotic institutions operate to create our social structure. In other words, cultural racism shapes the structural answers to “Whose life counts?”. With a framework linking cultural and structural racism through history, the fundamental drivers — and potential intervention points — of contemporary population health inequalities becomes clearer.
Bio:
Maggie Hicken is an interdisciplinary population health scientist with training in both demography and epidemiology as well as molecular and cellular biology and population genetics. She examines notions of cultural and structural racism and their relation to health inequities through biological mechanisms. Much of her research to date has focused on cultural racism and the toxic burden of vigilance on the part of Black Americans as they navigate everyday White space as well as on modifying impact of biosocial stress on the association between environmental hazards and health. With her K01 award, she gained training in population genetics and has examined the role of the social environment in the link between genes and chronic conditions. Further, with her current R01-funded research, she is examining the both historical and contemporary forms of residential segregation, the interactive impact of social stressors and environmental hazards, and DNA methylation patterns that might be associated with racial inequalities in aging. Through each thread of her research, Dr. Hicken weaves together theory from the humanities, legal studies, and social science to clarify the root causes of racial health inequalities.
This event will be held on Zoom and is closed to the public. We will post a recording after the talk. You can see previous events here.

Fenaba Addo: Wealth Inequality in Young Adulthood: Higher Education, Racial Disparities, and Middle Class Status
2021-01-22 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York)
On January 22, 2021, Fenaba Addo, an Associate Professor of Public Policy at UNC, will present “Wealth Inequality in Young Adulthood: Higher Education, Racial Disparities, and Middle Class Status” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2020-21 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series. This year, the CPC Interdisciplinary Research Seminars will be open to both CPC members and Social Epidemiology program members.
Abstract:
For whom is higher education an engine of economic mobility? How should we value post-secondary education in a society with extreme wealth inequality and skyrocketing student loan debt? The message that post-secondary education is one of the strongest predictors of socioeconomic mobility, for Black and Latinx young adults in particular, is quite pervasive. It was not until recently, however, that we as society begin to grapple with amount of debt that individuals are having to take on in order to complete their post-secondary degrees. Using data of youth born in the early 1980s, this new research examines racial inequality in wealth in young adulthood, its relationship with higher education, and what is means to be middle class.
Bio:
Fenaba R. Addo is an Associate Professor of Public Policy. Her work examines debt and wealth inequality with a focus on family, relationships, and higher education. She received her Ph.D. in Policy Analysis and Management from Cornell University and holds a B.S. in Economics from Duke University. Prior to joining UNC, she was the Lorna Jorgensen Wendt Associate Professor of Money, Relationships, and Equality (MORE) in the Department of Consumer Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
This event will be held on Zoom. You can register here. We will post a recording after the talk. You can see previous events here.

Elizabeth Wrigley-Field: The Deaths America Treats as Normal
2021-01-29 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York)
On January 29, 2021, Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, and a Faculty Member of the Minnesota Population Center, will present “The Deaths America Treats as Normal” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2020-21 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series. This year, the CPC Interdisciplinary Research Seminars will be open to both CPC members and Social Epidemiology program members.
Abstract:
This talk explores racial disparities in mortality during U.S. pandemics, using the 1918 flu and COVID-19 pandemics to develop general frameworks for understanding inequality in pandemic experiences—and what they reveal about inequality during ordinary, non-pandemic times. The first part of the talk considers racial disparities during the most devastating respiratory pandemic of the 20th century, the 1918 flu; shows that those disparities were surprisingly small; and develops new hypotheses, grounded in social immunology, to account for this anomaly. The second part of the talk pivots from 1918 to 2020. During the 1918 pandemic, U.S. white mortality was still lower than U.S. Black mortality had been nearly every year. Today, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the same pattern holds: for white mortality in 2020 to reach the best-ever Black mortality levels would take 400,000 excess deaths among whites. Using pandemic mortality as a measuring stick for racial disparities offers a new perspective on the measures we do — and do not — embrace in order to combat racial inequality. I use demographic mortality models to make a new, demographically based case for reparations for racism.
Bio:
Elizabeth Wrigley-Field is a sociologist and demographer at the University of Minnesota, specializing in racial inequality in mortality and historical infectious disease. She is also a quantitative methodologist, developing models designed to clarify relationships between micro and macro perspectives on demographic relationships.
This event will be held on Zoom. You can register here. We will post a recording after the talk. You can see previous events here.

By the Book Event :: Feb 03 :: Living on the Edge: An American Generation’s Journey through the Twentieth Century
2021-02-03 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York)
The authors of Living on the Edge, Richard A. Settersten Jr., Glen H. Elder Jr., and Lisa D. Pearce, are joined in conversation with Stephanie Coontz to discuss their new book!
Drawing from the iconic longitudinal Berkeley Guidance Study, Living on the Edge: An American Generation’s Journey through the Twentieth Century reveals the hopes, struggles, and daily lives of the 1900 generation. Most surprising is how relevant and relatable the lives and experiences of this generation are today, despite the gap of a century. From the reorganization of marriage and family roles and relationships to strategies for adapting to a dramatically changing economy, the challenges faced by this earlier generation echo our own time.
Living on the Edge offers an intimate glimpse into not just the history of our country, but the feelings, dreams, and fears of a generation remarkably kindred to the present day.
Join us for a panel discussion on this timely subject on Wednesday, February 3, at 12PM Eastern. REGISTER HERE.
