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Assessing the mental health of UW students during spring 2020

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Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been growing concern over how social distancing and pandemic-related isolation have impacted mental health. Of significant interest is the pandemic’s impact on student mental health, recognizing the stressfulness of academia and navigating the uncertainty of 2020. Coincidentally, a University of Washington study on student mental health was in progress while these events unfolded. The research team had been studying student mental health over the past four years. The overlap between the onset of the…

Winter 2022 undergraduate course highlights UW population health research

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The Population Health Initiative is continuing its partnership with the University of Washington’s Undergraduate Research Program (URP) to offer a series of lectures during winter quarter 2022 that focus on the three pillars of population health: human health, environmental resilience and social and economic equity. The Research Exposed! (General Studies 391 D) course will feature faculty from a number of disciplines discussing their population health-related research. Undergraduates may take this course for credit (i.e., one credit/quarter; three quarters max). Each…

Impact of wildfire smoke hit some groups harder than others

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Nearly a dozen researchers from the University of Washington Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences (DEOHS) in the School of Public Health have been hard at work addressing questions and health risks associated with wildfires in the Northwest. Through a series of community-based research projects, DEOHS researchers and their collaborators are working to study the dangers of wildfires, identify those most vulnerable to uncontrolled fires and develop innovative solutions to alleviate or reduce the health issues associated with wildfires….

UW Community Circle launches, seeks to build a community of care

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Several University of Washington programs are launching a community circle with a conversation about Resmaa Menakem’s book, My Grandmother’s Hands, which focuses on how to build a community of care by addressing embodied trauma. The kickoff event is occurring virtually on October 28, 2021 at 4 p.m. Pacific and is open to all UW faculty and staff. Interested participants should register online by October 25th. The ebook is available via UW Libraries. The community circle will serve as a space…

Northwest Detention Center study examines pandemic’s effect on local immigrant population

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The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has impacted virtually every aspect of society, notably the United States immigration system. The United States has the largest immigrant detention infrastructure in the world. Immigrant rights advocates have raised concerns over the management of American detention centers, with concerns regarding human rights conditions experienced by immigrants who encounter such centers. While the pandemic led to a suspension of many immigration court proceedings and the closure of travel borders, immigrants and their families have been disproportionately…

Spotlight: Shawn Swanson pursues medical innovations through social entrepreneurship

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Shawn Swanson is a Mechanical Engineering Ph.D. candidate at the University of Washington College of Engineering and 2021 Population Health Social Entrepreneurship Fellow. He is also the CEO and co-founder of MedsForAll, a startup that aims to provide accessible and affordable rescue drug autoinjectors to historically underserved populations. The idea behind MedsForAll stemmed from Swanson’s background and expertise in materials science and engineering. “I always had been interested in materials since I was a kid,” Swanson said. “This interest led…

New study explores impact of police action on population health

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Policing and exposures to law enforcement impact the population health of a community, a new University of Washington-led study demonstrates. The research study shows how policing influences the health and wellbeing of communities in complex ways that have short- and long-term consequences. The researchers conceptualize how incidents involving police, whether indirect or direct, lead to a series of effects on individuals, the community, and the broader systems in which they reside. Collectively, these effects involve a “bidirectional” relationship between policing…

Project EMAR works to improve adolescent mental health via a co-designed social robot

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According to data from the National Institute of Mental Health, about 3.2 million teens in the United States have had at least one major depressive episode within the past 12 months. These findings confirm that depression and anxiety among teenagers have been on the rise, which provokes questions around whether current school-based mental health services sufficiently support teens. To address this mental health crisis, Elin A. Björling, senior research scientist and part-time lecturer in the Department of Human Centered Design…

Social Entrepreneurship Fellows develop strategic roadmaps for UW innovations

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The Population Health Initiative’s summer 2021 Social Entrepreneurship Fellows Program concluded in August with the fellows presenting their findings to students, faculty and staff from schools and colleges across campus. The fellows spent 10 weeks working on population health innovations developed by University of Washington researchers to determine how these innovations could be financially sustainable while also having a substantial societal impact. The Social Entrepreneurship Fellows Program was developed by the Population Health Initiative – in partnership with the Buerk…

Spotlight: Nidhi Agrawal’s consumer psychology expertise helps improve population health

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Nidhi Agrawal, the Michael G. Foster Endowed Professor of Marketing and International Business at the UW Foster School of Business, works actively to foster collaborations within her field of business and marketing to address critical population health-related issues. Her passion for marketing began as an undergraduate student at Gujarat University in Ahmedabad, India, where she developed an interest in how advertising influences lifestyles and perceptions. “A friend of mine was very interested in advertising and was reading a book by…