The 91探花鈥檚 , or CSDE, along with partners in the Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences and the , is among eight awardees across the country selected to develop training programs in advanced data analytics for population health through the National Institutes of Health鈥檚 Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research.

This five-year, $1.8 million training program at the 91探花will fund 25 academic-year graduate fellowships, develop a new training curriculum and contribute to methodological advances in health research at the intersection of demography and data science.

The new training program will be led by , assistant professor of sociology, and will build on CSDE鈥檚 graduate certificate in demographic methods by integrating training in advanced statistics and computational methods.

The inaugural cohort will begin the program in October and is composed of graduate students Ian Kennedy, Neal Marquez and Crystal Yu, all in sociology; Emily Pollock in anthropology; and Aja Sutton in geography.

鈥淥ur faculty are at the forefront of research programs grounded in advanced data analytics,鈥� said Robert Stacey, dean of the UW鈥檚 College of Arts and Sciences. 鈥淭his grant recognizes the important interdisciplinary work happening across the UW, and particularly in the social sciences, to build this knowledge into much-needed education and training programs.鈥�

, associate professor of sociology and statistics, and , professor of statistics and biostatistics, led聽the grant application with support from , director of the CSDE and a professor of international studies, public policy and sociology, along with faculty affiliated with CSDE, CSSS and the eScience Institute.

The NIH review praised UW鈥檚 plans. 鈥淭he leadership team has well-established credentials, complementary expertise, and a strong track record and the proposed program builds on an existing program with demonstrable record of success,鈥� noted reviewers. 鈥淭he curriculum 鈥� which offers coursework in statistical methods, machine learning, coding, databases, data visualization and data ethics 鈥� is well-thought-out and will provide trainees with numerous immersive opportunities.鈥�

This funding was designed to fill educational gaps and needs in the behavioral and social sciences research community that are not being addressed by existing educational opportunities, according to the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research. The other institutions awarded similar grants include Emory University; Johns Hopkins University; Stanford University; University of Arkansas Medical Center; the University of California, Berkeley; UC San Diego; and UC San Francisco. More information about the national initiative can be found .

For more information, contact Curran at scurran@uw.edu or Almquist at zalmquist@uw.edu.

Adapted from information provided by the 91探花Center for Studies in Demography & Ecology.

The awards are part of the NIH’s annual research program, which supports creative scientists pursuing innovative biomedical research for broad impact. There are 93 recipients nationwide who will share $267 million in grant money over five years, pending available funds. Luedtke and McCormick have each been awarded $2,332,500.

Luedtke is a 91探花assistant professor of statistics, and an affiliate assistant member of the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Division at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. His uses aspects of machine learning to create statistical models to answer questions in public health, with an emphasis on those in infectious disease prevent research.

McCormick is a 91探花associate professor of statistics and sociology. He is a core faculty member in the Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences and is a senior data science fellow at the as well as the editor of the Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics. His looks at how uncertainty in data-gathering and statistical modeling informs decision-making processes undertaken by policymakers.

The High-Risk, High-Reward Research program supports scientific discovery through innovative research proposals that, due to their inherent risk, may struggle in the traditional peer review process despite their scientific. Program applicants are encouraged to think outside-the-box and to pursue trailblazing ideas in any area of research relevant to the NIH mission.

Of the 93 awards, 60 were New Innovator awards. Also announced were 11 , 13 awards and nine awards.

In 2018, one 91探花researcher was among ; in 2017 three 91探花researchers were among 86 awardees.

###

Adapted from an . For more information, contact Luedtke at aluedtke@uw.edu or McCormick at tylermc@uw.edu.

91探花Notebook is a section of the 91探花News site dedicated to telling stories of the good work done by faculty and staff at the 91探花. Read all posts here.

The research, led by , 91探花 associate professor of sociology, reveals the racial inequality wrought by the U.S. prison boom, with potentially harmful consequences to families and communities left lacking social supports for raising children and managing households.

In an published May 20 in the , Lee and co-authors analyzed data from the 2006 General Social Survey, which involved about 4,500 respondents. They studied blacks and whites’ self-reported ties to acquaintances, family members, neighbors or people they trust in state or federal prison.

The data tell a grim story:

• 44 percent of black women and 32 percent of black men have a family member in prison, compared to 12 percent of white women and 6 percent of white men.
• Black women are far more likely to have an acquaintance (35 percent vs. 15 percent), family member (44 percent vs. 12 percent), neighbor (22 percent vs. 4 percent), or someone they trust (17 percent vs. 5 percent) in prison than are white women.

The authors note that while research has considered the cause of the “prison boom” and its effect on crime rates and on those imprisoned, the “spillover effects” of that imprisonment trend have been elusive until now.

Lee said, “Our results extend previous research on connectedness to show just how pervasive contact with prisoners is for Americans 鈥� especially black women. We make visible a large group of women dealing with the consequences of having a family member in prison. Mass imprisonment has reshaped inequality not only for those in prison, but also for those intimately connected to them.”

The researchers write in the paper that it is likely that mass imprisonment has reshaped inequality, not only for the men “for whom imprisonment has become so common,” but also for their families, friends, neighbors and confidants “who bear the stigma of incarceration along with them.”

Co-author of Cornell University said the estimates show deeper racial inequities in connectedness to prisoners than implied by previous work.

“Because imprisonment has negative consequences not only for the men and women who cycle through the system but also for the parents, partners and progeny they leave behind,” Wildeman said. “Mass imprisonment’s long-term consequences of racial inequity in the United States might be even greater than any of us working in this area had originally suspected.”

In the past four decades, the U.S. incarceration rate has soared to the highest in the world. According to recent estimates, the U.S. imprisonment rate is 716 per 100,000 individuals, outpacing repressive nations such as Russia and well beyond other developed countries. Currently, one in every 15 adult black men is behind bars, compared to one in every 106 adult white men.

Lee said for future research along these lines, the team would like to examine how connections to prisons vary not only by race and gender, but also by class.

Other co-authors are , a 91探花professor of statistics and of sociology, and Margaret Hicken at the University of Michigan. The study was unfunded.

###

Adapted from a by Ted Boscia of Cornell University. For more information, contact Lee at 206-543-4572 or hedylee@uw.edu.