News

Under the leadership of Dana Pasquale, Postdoctoral Associate, Department of Sociology, the Centers for Disease Control  and Prevention (CDC)  have awarded the innovative  two-year  “Respondent-Driven Sampling, Respiratory Disease Surveillance Study  (the SNOWBALL Study)” to a large consortium of Duke researchers, to better understand  SARS-CoV-2 Transmission  in Durham County, NC. The SNOWBALL Study brings together researchers from Duke Forge, Duke Crucible, the Covidentify Study , the Duke Population Research Institute (DUPRI) and the MESSI Study to investigate the potential of the Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS) methodology. The RDS approach relies on respondents’ active engagement of their own close-contact networks to build a self-generating contact trace from persons who test positive for infection with SARS-CoV-2.

The NIA supported Animal Models Research Network  under the leadership of Jenny Tung, Associate Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology and Biology at Duke University, Alessandro Bartolomucci, Associate Professor of Integrative Biology and Physiology at University of Minnesota, and Kathleen Mullan Harris,  James E. Haar Distinguished Professor of Sociology at UNC, has recently selected its inaugural cohort of Bruce McEwen Career Development Fellows. These awards support outstanding junior scientists with high potential to advance the use of animal models or comparative approaches to understand the social determinants of health and aging.

Two Duke Predoctoral students, Ruth M Wygle, Department of Sociology and Sarah Petry, Sanford School of Public Policy, have been selected to participate in the International Max Planck Research School for Population, Health and Data Science (IMPRS-PHDS). This new and unique three-year doctoral program aims at training the next generation of population scientists by providing training in the materials and methods of demography and population health combined with advanced skills in  statistics, mathematical modeling, and data science. The School is hosted by two core partners, the MPIDR and the University of Rostock, in partnership with ten affiliated institutions worldwide that have complementary strengths. In addition to Duke, other partner universities include the University of Greifswald, the University of Groningen/NIDI, Erasmus Medical Center  Rotterdam, the University of Helsinki, Oxford University, the University of St. Andrews, Stockholm University, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Washington.

Scott M. Lynch, Professor of Sociology, has been awarded a five year Center Grant funded by the Division of Social and Behavioral Research of the National Institute of Aging, securing ongoing support for the Center for Population Health and Aging (CPHA) at Duke. With a legacy that extends well over four decades, CPHA  provides a synergistic, interdisciplinary environment for advancing cutting-edge research and cultivating faculty and students focused on the study of aging through network of population scientists from the social and behavioral sciences and the biological, health, and statistical sciences at Duke.

Christopher Wildeman, Professor of Sociology, joins Duke University  and  the Duke University Population Research Institute (DUPRI) as its newest Faculty Scholar. Wildeman comes to Duke from Cornell University where he was Professor of Policy Analysis and Management in the College of Human Ecology and Professor of Sociology (by courtesy). He was also Director of the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research, Director for the National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect (NDACAN), a position he will continue to hold from Duke, and Associate Vice Provost for the Social Sciences.

Kenneth C. Land, John Franklin Crowell Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Sociology and DUPRI Scholar, is the new Chair-Elect to the American Sociological Association (ASA) Evolution, Biology and Society (EBS) Section. The EBS section is designed to improve dialogue between sociology and the biological sciences. Of particular concern is the interaction between material and social environments with biological processes and evolved predispositions common to all humans.

The 2020 Summer Institute on Computational Social Science  (SICSS) held June 22-26, 2020  featured a Panel Discussion on Digital and Computational Demography. Panelists included  Nicolò Cavalli (SICSS-Duke 18, SICSS-Oxford 19), Ridhi Kashyap (SICSS-Princeton 17, SICSS-Oxford 19), and Francesco Rampazzo (SICSS-Duke 18).

Duke University researchers V. Joseph Hotz, Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of Economics, Scott Abrahams, PhD candidate in Economics,  and Marwa AlFakhri, PhD candidate at the Sanford School of Public Policy,  join co-authors Emily E .Weimers, Syracuse University, Robert F. Schoeni, University of Michigan and Judith A. Seltzer, the University of California, Los Angeles, to provide  the first nationally representative estimates of vulnerability to severe complications from COVID-19 overall and across race-ethnicity and socioeconomic status.

Jenny Tung,  Associate Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology, Susan Alberts, Robert F. Durden Distinguished Professor of Biology and Angela O’Rand, Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Director of the Duke Population Research Institute (DUPRI),  join a distinguished multidisciplinary and inter-institutional  team of co-authors featured in the latest edition of Science, in their review, “Social Determinants of Health and Survival in Humans and Other Animals.”

Benjamin Goldstein Associate Professor of Biostatistics & Bioinformatics, Duke Clinical Research Institute, Children's Health & Discovery Initiative, and DUPRI Research Scholar delivered a comprehensive talk on Electronic Health Records available though the Duke University Health System to Duke University and Health System researchers, “Working with EHR Data from Duke University Health System: What is it and How Do I do it?"