Saturday, November 23, 2024
11/23/2024
Abstract The parent award supports an innovative, rigorous, and widely-recognized training program in population sciences in the Center for Demography and Ecology (CDE) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The CDE population sciences training program has maintained nearly continuous NICHD T32 funding since 1975. Our graduates are among the leaders in population research today, serving in a range of academic, government and applied research settings. Guided by the NICHD mission “to ensure the health, productivity, independence, and well-being of all people,” CDE research is organized around five major areas: 1) Families and Family Change; 2) Inequality, Poverty, Wealth, and Mobility; 3) Health and Biodemography; 4) Spatial and Environmental Demography, and 5) Gender and Reproductive Health. Our training objectives—and associated research activities—fall squarely under the Population Dynamics Branch which “supports research, data collection, and research training in demography, reproductive health, and population health.” The primary goals of the CDE training program in demography are: (1) to foster an interdisciplinary community of junior scholars in population research; (2) to build expertise in demographic theory, methods, and analysis; and (3) to cultivate students’ professional skills, including the organization, execution, presentation, publication, and critique of research. CDE training involves four essential components: (1) formal training via coursework in students’ home departments and interdisciplinary coursework in other departments; (2) exposure to cutting-edge research in the broader population studies community; (3) collaboration in substantive research projects of CDE training faculty through an apprenticeship model; and (4) professional socialization and integration into the field of population studies. Predoctoral T32 trainees are appointed in year 2 or 3 of their PhD program, having shown clear academic promise and a strong commitment to pursuing a population research career. Trainees typically receive T32 funding for two to three years. This supplement requests three years of traineeship funding for an outstanding PhD student in Economics, Zohal Barsi, who is a scholar of U.S. poverty and its effects on health and wellbeing. Barsi is a first-generation Black woman from a low-income family. Barsi is a stellar student and has clear potential for a high-impact research career in population science studying the market-based policy mechanisms that shape poverty, health, and wellbeing in the United States. Barsi has developed an innovative, rigorous, and well- designed research agenda. As a CDE trainee, she will benefit from the integration of tools from sociology, economics, and population health to develop her research. Barsi will receive weekly professional development training, including in reproducibility and responsible research. She will receive committed mentorship from an interdisciplinary team of CDE faculty Jesse Gregory (Economics) and Katherine Curtis (Sociology), both with excellent training records. NIH support will make possible Barsi’s development into a highly skilled early- career researcher in the population sciences.
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).
