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April 2

Population Research Exchange: “Hong Kong’s Elderly Biobank: An invaluable resource for global healthy aging promotion”

Population Research in text with headshot on white background of Jane Zhao, PhD, assistant professor of epidemiology and biostatistics, Hong Kong University, and Takemi Fellow, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Location
Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies (The Pop Center)
9 Bow Street
Cambridge, MA United States

Time

3:00 pm 4:00 pm

Event Type

From Around the School, Lectures/Seminars/Forums

Jane Zhao, PhD, assistant professor of epidemiology and biostatistics, Hong Kong University, and Takemi Fellow, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, presents at this Population Research Exchange (PRX).

PRX delivers timely information on population science research and resources in a variety of formats. Each event features a different topic/theme by way of a special event, seminar, work-in-progress, mini methods workshop, resource information session, etc. Affiliated faculty members, students, and researchers share their current and future work, and some weeks we welcome guests who present on important resources available to Harvard scholars. In a true “exchange” format, lively dialogue and interchange occurs among attendees.

Speaker Information

April 3

Harvard Pop Center Social Demography Seminar: “Intergenerational education and cognitive performance among older adults: A comparison between rural Mexico and South Africa”

Social Demography text and Meza headshot
Location
Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies (The Pop Center)
9 Bow Street
Cambridge, MA United States

Time

12:00 pm 1:15 pm

Event Type

From Around the School, Lectures/Seminars/Forums

Erika Meza, PhD, Harvard Bell Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, presents at this Social Demography Seminar.

The Social Demography Seminar (SDS) series at the Center for Population and Development Studies provides a lively forum for scholars from across the university to discuss in-progress social scientific and population research. Social demography includes work that uses demographic methods to describe and explain the distribution of social goods across populations. The hybrid series offers presentations on a wide variety of topics such as family, gender, race/ethnicity, population health—including mortality, morbidity, and functional health—inequality, immigration, fertility, and the institutional arrangements that shape and respond to population processes.

Speaker Information

March 27

Social Demography Seminar: “The impact of social services on the well-being and sense of belonging of older Hispanic immigrants”

Headshot on beige swirly background with Social Demography text of Rocío Calvo, PhD, professor of global practice, Boston College School of Social Work
Location
Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies (The Pop Center)
9 Bow Street
Cambridge, MA United States

Time

12:00 pm 1:15 pm

Event Type

From Around the School, Lectures/Seminars/Forums

Rocío Calvo, PhD, professor of global practice, Boston College School of Social Work presents at this Social Demography Seminar.

The Social Demography Seminar (SDS) series at the Center for Population and Development Studies provides a lively forum for scholars from across the university to discuss in-progress social scientific and population research. Social demography includes work that uses demographic methods to describe and explain the distribution of social goods across populations. The hybrid series offers presentations on a wide variety of topics such as family, gender, race/ethnicity, population health—including mortality, morbidity, and functional health—inequality, immigration, fertility, and the institutional arrangements that shape and respond to population processes.

Speaker Information

April 16

Building Foundations: Addressing Housing Insecurity to Improve Child Health

Natalie Slopen headshot
Location
Virtual

Time

1:00 pm 1:50 pm

Event Type

From Around the School, Lectures/Seminars/Forums

Abstract: The ongoing housing affordability crisis in the US poses significant challenges to the wellbeing of children. In this presentation, I will provide an overview of the relationship between housing instability and children’s health drawing on a range of recent studies. I will also describe evidence from both quasi-experimental and experimental research to demonstrate how housing interventions can mitigate negative impacts and promote healthier outcomes for children. 

Bio: Dr. Natalie Slopen is a social epidemiologist with a focus on child development, health equity, and life course theory. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Slopen’s research focuses on how social and environmental factors influence health and well-being in childhood and across the lifespan. Her work, encompassing both observational and experimental studies, aims to generate insights that can shape effective policies and programs to promote health equity. 

Speaker Information

April 30

Epidemiologic Methods and Data Science: Stronger Together

Stopsack headshot
Location
Virtual

Time

1:00 pm 1:50 pm

Event Type

From Around the School, Lectures/Seminars/Forums

Abstract: Epidemiologic methods often focus on a statistical model as the main step to getting “the” result. This talk will attempt to widen the perspective on epidemiologic methods. How do we develop and communicate our research plans in a team? How do the numbers from a regression model make it into a table in a manuscript? Practical examples will be shown how standard approaches from data science and free software packages can speed up our work in epidemiology and improve its reproducibility. As a corollary, epidemiology-minded data science might not just need to be a core component in the training of the next generation of epidemiologists, but can in turn also help teach epidemiologic methods. 

Bio: Konrad Stopsack leads the Department of Epidemiological Methods and Etiological Research at the Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology – BIPS in Bremen, Germany. His applied research focuses on molecular and cancer epidemiology. His methodologic and teaching interests include application and further development of epidemiologic methods to improve reproducibility, interpretability, and efficiency of epidemiologic studies. 

Speaker Information

April 10

Solving America’s housing crisis: A Q&A with Marcia Fudge, Former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development

Headshot of speaker Marcia Fudge
Location
The Studio & Online

Time

1:00 pm 1:30 pm

Event Type

From Around the School, Lectures/Seminars/Forums

At least 40 million American households—including half of all renters—spend more on housing than they can afford. Many lower-income renters are just scraping by, often sacrificing necessities like food and healthcare to pay the rent. And the number who are homeless is surging: 770,000 people, according to a 2024 count, many of whom have jobs but still can’t afford housing. Join Marcia Fudge, former secretary of Housing and Urban Development, as she talks with Howard Koh, chair of Harvard Chan School’s Initiative on Health and Homelessness, about the forces driving the housing crisis and ways to make housing more affordable. 

Register for free to submit your questions.   

An on-demand video will be posted after the event. 

Presented jointly with the Initiative on Health and Homelessness at Harvard Chan School; Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies; Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative; and the Government Performance Lab at HKS 

Speaker

Moderator

About The Studio

The Harvard Chan Studio is the hub for the School’s premier in-person and live-streamed events. We convene global leaders in health policy, advocacy, industry, and research for insightful conversations about public health’s most pressing challenges and most promising solutions.

Read more about The Studio here.

April 11

Building a Learning Health System: the VA-CAUSAL Enterprise (19th Kolokotrones Symposium)

Flyer for event with blue background
Location
HSPH, Kresge G1, Snyder Auditorium
677 Huntington Ave
Boston, MA United States

Time

10:30 am 3:00 pm

Event Type

Conferences and Symposia, From Around the School

CAUSALab is thrilled to invite you to the 19th Kolokotrones Symposium at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health!

This hybrid symposium celebrates the 100th anniversary of research for our VA-CAUSAL collaborator, the VA Office of Research & Development.

“Building a Learning Health System: the VA-CAUSAL Enterprise” will explore how VA-CAUSAL may serve as a helpful model for future learning health systems. Speakers will describe the program infrastructure, research use cases, and policy implications. The symposium will conclude with a panel discussion on the future of research to build learning health systems.

VA-CAUSAL is a causal inference research initiative within the U.S. Veterans Health Administration. The goal of VA-CAUSAL is to help transform the VA into a learning health system that expedites the translation of research into practice and supports decision-making by patients, clinicians, and other stakeholders to improve health.

Featured symposium speakers to be announced.

Event information including directions and building access will be sent directly to registered in-person attendees in the weeks leading up to the event. Zoom link will be distributed to all virtual attendees the week leading up to the event.

Speakers’ remarks are based on their own scholarship and experience. As such, they speak for themselves, and not for Harvard, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), or the United States government.

Organizers

March 27

Eastern Congo Teach-in at FXB

map of the democratic republic of Congo
Location
FXB – Room 710
651 Huntington Avenue
Boston, MA 02115 United States

Time

12:00 pm 1:00 pm

Event Type

From Around the School, Lectures/Seminars/Forums

Join us for a teach-in session shedding light on the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo where rapid escalation of violence has resulted in the death and abuse of civilians, the massive internal displacement of 7.3 million people-of which 3.7 million are children, and food insecurity affecting 25.4 million people including 13.2 million children.

April 3

How are people suffering from the war? Story of a displaced health professional due to conflict in Myanmar

Location
Building 1 – Room 1208
665 Huntington Avenue
Boston, MA 02115 United States

Time

1:00 pm 2:00 pm

Event Type

From Around the School, Lectures/Seminars/Forums

Watch here

Join the Department of Global Health and Population for our weekly Thursday Brown Bag Series! On April 3, (Cindy) Su Su Lin, MB, BS, M.Med.Sc., will present “How are people suffering from the war? Story of a displaced health professional due to conflict in Myanmar”. Cindy is LEAD Fellow (2024) at the Harvard Global Health Institute.

The Thursday Brown Bag Series is a weekly seminar series featuring current research of faculty, affiliates, and guests of the department. Any questions regarding the series can be directed to the department at GHP@hsph.harvard.edu.

Speakers will share their own perspectives; they do not speak for Harvard

Speaker Information

May 1

ID Epi Seminar Series – Amy Wesolowski

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Time

1:00 pm 2:00 pm

Event Type

From Around the School, Lectures/Seminars/Forums

May 1, 2025 | 1-2pm ET | Kresge G2

Modeling human behavior to understanding infectious disease dynamics – examples of population-level mobility and injecting behaviors of people who injection drugs

Presented by Amy Wesolowski, Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Amy Wesolowski is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She obtained her PhD in Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University and was a postdoctoral fellow at HSPH and Princeton University. Her research focuses on understanding human behavior and how it relates to infectious disease transmission. She works on multiple pathogens including malaria, measles, and HCV.

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Each spring, the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics hosts an annual seminar series, featuring talks from experts on the latest research in infectious disease epidemiology and modeling.

Speakers will share their own perspectives and do not speak for Harvard.