Seminar Series

Qualitative research suggests that mothers play a critical role in supporting adult children both during and after experiences of incarceration, yet the implications of incarceration for the parents of incarcerated individuals have been relatively unexplored in existing research. Wealth research has also largely overlooked questions of how adult children influence parental wealth, tending to instead focus on downward intergenerational processes and transfers from older generations to younger generations. Using mother-child linked data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 and the NLSY79 Child and Young Adult cohort, we investigate whether child incarceration appears to influence maternal wealth, what mechanisms play the largest role in driving this relationship, and, finally, whether accounting for child incarceration history helps to explain the racial wealth gap among American women.
Date
10/20/2022
Time
3:30pm - 4:45pm
Venue
Gross Hall, Room 270
Ten Years in Balaka outlines the main contours of population change in Balaka, Malawi between 2009-2019. This includes rapid population growth, urbanisation, the introduction and proliferation of mobile phones, educational expansion, the arrival of new technologies for treating HIV and a series of three distinct policies for rationing treatment in an environment of high-demand and limited resources. This is a decade of significant social transformation and uncertainty is a predictable accompaniment of change. Dr Jenny Trinitapoli will introduce the Tsogolo La Thanzi (TLT) study, describing its origins, design, procedures, epistemological underpinnings and limitations.
Date
10/13/2022
Time
3:30pm - 4:45pm
Venue
Gross Hall, Room 270
In this presentation, I will discuss my efforts to connect evolutionary medicine and global health through research in Madagascar. Working with Malagasy partners, we are investigating human and animal health in a rural village in northeastern Madagascar. I will discuss two major groups of projects. One set of projects considers how Malagasy lifestyles – and the ways these lifestyles are changing – influences health and disease. The other projects consider how human land use influences human-animal interactions and zoonotic disease risk.
Date
9/29/2022
Time
3:30pm - 4:45pm
Venue
Gross Hall, Room 270
Although recent news about gun deaths, gun ownership and gun legislation is disheartening, a slightly longer time horizon provides more promising news. From 1991 to 2016 most states implemented more restrictive gun laws, and the US experienced a decline in household gun ownership and a drop in gun deaths. This article examines whether changes in the household firearm ownership rate (HFR) from 1991 to 2016 within US states are associated with changes in the rate of gun deaths.
Date
9/22/2022
Time
3:30pm - 4:45pm
Venue
Zoom Seminar. Please contact laura.satterfield@duke.edu to obtain Seminar Link.
According to brain science, older adults should be emotionally dysregulated and unmotivated. According to behavioral science, the opposite is true. As a graduate student, post-doc, and now faculty member I’ve spent the last 15 or so years trying to figure out how any of this possibly makes sense. I’ll share some progress we’ve made using PET imaging to understand how the dopamine system changes with age and some recent experience sampling data on how self-regulation in everyday life (specifically, controlling temptations) might shift as we get older.
Date
9/15/2022
Time
3:30pm - 4:45pm
Venue
Gross Hall, Room 270
Governments, organizations, practitioners and funders alike rely on the steady production, promotion, and dissemination of scientific knowledge on family planning behaviors. The existing empirical evidence is rich and diverse, but this body of research is extremely heterogeneous and disparate, making it difficult to draw conclusions about how best to advance the field of research and practice. The need for such assessments is crucial as there are still countries and regions where contraceptive uptake has stalled. Our scoping review of the peer-reviewed literature published between 2000-2016 on the determinants of contraceptive use, non-use and unmet need aims to understand the state of knowledge in the field by examining where, when, how, and by whom is research conducted and to what impact.
Date
9/08/2022
Time
3:30pm - 4:45pm
Venue
Gross Hall, Room 270
In this presentation, Professor Yu Xie first documents a sharp rise in economic inequality in contemporary China, drawing on newly available survey data collected by several Chinese university survey organizations. He then presents results from his research program on the impact of rising economic inequality on a variety of social and demographic outcomes in China: intergenerational mobility, mortality, marriage age, marriage partner choice, and fertility.
Date
4/14/2022
Time
3:30pm - 5:00pm
Recent news and debate regarding the FDA approval of Aduhelm, a new medication aimed at slowing the cognitive decline of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), has brought to wider attention major shifts in the understanding and approach to diagnosing and treating AD and other causes of dementia. This seminar will review accumulating data and new approaches over the last twenty years to define and classify cognitive decline and dementia, including the importance of vascular contributions to the risk for cognitive decline, racial and ethnic differences in risk, and trends in dementia incidence and prevalence over recent decades. Recent focus on the biological pathways that are thought to cause the cognitive and functional decline associated with AD will be reviewed, as well as their implications for diagnosis and treatment, as highlighted by the current debate regarding the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of Aduhelm and other similar treatments currently under review.
Date
3/24/2022
Time
3:30pm - 5:00pm
Venue
Gross Hall, Room 270
What is aging? When does it begin? How to control lifespan? Can we rejuvenate organisms in addition to slowing down the aging process? There is no consensus, but recent developments in the field allow to begin answering these questions. In particular, DNA methylation of defined sets of CpG dinucleotides emerged as a critical and precise biomarker of the aging process. Multi-variate machine learning models, known as epigenetic clocks, can exploit quantitative changes in the methylome to predict the age of bulk tissue with remarkable accuracy. The first epigenetic aging clock that works at the level of single cells has also been recently developed. Together with advances in genomics and intervention strategies, these tools support accurate quantification and manipulation of the aging process. Additional topics to be covered in the talk will include development and application of molecular signatures of longevity and research on different types of rejuvenation.
Date
3/17/2022
Time
3:30pm - 5:00pm
Venue
Zoom Seminar. Please contact laura.satterfield@duke.edu to obtain Seminar Link.
Ruth Wygle, Predoctoral Student,  Duke Department of Sociology, presents. “Identifying Current and Future Uses of Standardized Jail Data Collection Efforts for Healthcare Practitioners Serving Justice-involved Individuals.” It is estimated that upwards of 10 million unique individuals experience jail incarceration each year in the US. In most states, there is no standardized, centralized mechanism for collecting information from local jails. In contrast, State prisons do have centralized administrative systems, which have the capacity to generate data that can be accessed by myriad actors in the criminal justice system, including practitioners, researchers and advocates. These data are routinely used to identify population trends, target resources to inmates and facilities and evaluate correctional policies and programs. In recent years, a growing number of States have implemented standardized data collection from local jails. Most statewide databases collect information on population counts and demographics, jail staffing and budgets, healthcare utilization, morbidity, and mortality. This type of data collection and analysis can be an important factor in policy innovation and research on a state’s correctional landscape. We sought to understand the context by which States come to develop such databases, as well as their content and their uses. We did so by conducting a thorough review of existing databases in the U.S. by searching state websites, reviewing public documents and interviewing officials in each state correctional office about the history and usage of their databases. Further, we interviewed multiple healthcare professionals serving justice-involved individuals to ascertain their thoughts about what data should be collected in a standardized way in order to improve the health care available to individuals experiencing jail incarceration and the health outcomes of these individuals. Through these efforts, we have developed a list of recommendations both for States considering implementing standardized data collection efforts and for local authorities wanting to improve their data collection efforts even in absence of a State mandate.  Garrett Baker, Predoctoral Student, Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy, presents,  “The Consequences of Paternal Incarceration for Youth’s Expectations and Aspirations” Children’s future orientation—their expectations and aspirations—has a consistent and substantial effect on a variety of life course outcomes. However, little research to date has considered empirically how future orientation is shaped by adverse events such as experiencing a parent be incarcerated. I leverage the unique nature of Add Health’s retrospective parent incarceration questions to employ an innovative analytic strategy that accounts for selection bias and unobserved heterogeneity above and beyond typical observational methods in this area. Results indicate that paternal incarceration reduces youth future orientation by nearly a full standard deviation and are robust to a variety of models and specifications. Given that parental incarceration is increasingly common and disproportionately experienced by disadvantaged youth, the large magnitude and causal nature of my results reveal an important pathway through which mass incarceration has contributed to the intergenerational transmission of inequality in the U.S. in recent decades.
Date
3/03/2022
Time
3:30pm - 5:00pm
Venue
Zoom Seminar. Please contact laura.satterfield@duke.edu to obtain Seminar Link.