Affiliate Updates: Postdoctoral Fellows, Faculty Honors, and Awards

CDE welcomed four new postdocs: Guadalupe Aguilera of the Health Disparities Research Scholars program, Jane Seymour, who is conducting research at the UW Collaborative for Reproductive Equity, directed by affiliate Jenny Higgins, and Laura E. T. Swan and Hoa Vu, both of whom are working with affiliate Tiffany Green in the population health sciences department.

Congratulations go to several CDE affiliates who received recent awards and honors. John Eason is a member of the inaugural cohort of the Urban Institute’s Equity Scholars Program. Established in 2021, the program provides emerging and established scholars the opportunity to deepen their policy-oriented research on race, equity, and structural racism. Over two years, the scholars will develop research that interrogates the effects of structural racism on people and places, offer evidence-based solutions to advance racial equity, and share their insights with decisionmakers best positioned to act. Eason is an associate professor of sociology and conducts mixed-methods research focused on rural and urban communities, punishment, and race. He is the founder and director of the UW–Madison Justice Lab.

Madelyne Greene was selected as a UW Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health (BIRCWH) scholar. Created by the Office of Research on Women’s Health, the BIRCWH program is a career-development program designed to connect junior faculty to senior faculty mentors with shared interests. At UW, the BIRCWH program’s mission is to improve women’s health by developing a scientific workforce capable of leading independently funded research. Greene’s research program examines mechanisms that cause and perpetuate disparities in sexual and reproductive health.

Malia Jones is a founding editor of Dear Pandemic, an essential, widely sought resource for COVID information. Recently, the World Health Organization has selected the work of Jones and colleagues as a case study in Best Practices in Scientific Communication in the Context of Health-Related Information Crises.

Congratulations to Katherine Magnuson, who directs the Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP) and secured a large Department of Health and Human Services grant to renew the IRP as the country’s only federally funded poverty research center.

In August, the board of the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science (IAPHS) approved the naming of the IAPHS Mentoring Award for Stephanie Robert. The IAPHS Mentoring Award is given annually to recognize an outstanding mentor who has made a significant positive impact on the intellectual and professional development of emerging scholars in IAPHS. Beginning in 2022, the “Stephanie Robert Mentoring Award” will acknowledge Roberts’s foundational role in the association’s mentoring program and her leadership as a mentor across multiple disciplinary fields.

Christine Schwartz was elected to the Population Association of America board of directors and will begin her three-year term in January 2022. Marcy Carlson was elected to the Nominations Committee and will begin duties immediately.

Kelly Marie Ward received the 2021 Carole Joffe and Stanley Henshaw Early Achievement in Social Science Research Award from the National Abortion Federation. The award honors an individual who has made exceptional contributions to generating abortion-related knowledge. Ward, who was the 2020–21 Anna Julia Cooper Postdoctoral Fellow at UW, is now an assistant professor in the sociology and gender and women’s studies departments. Ward works in the areas of the sociology of medicine, organizational sociology, and the sociology of race, class, and gender.