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New UW research assesses the harm of workplace psychosocial hazards

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New research from University of Washington School of Public Health examined the severity of occupational psychosocial hazards on U.S. workers while highlighting the underlying sociodemographic disparities that harm racially and ethnically minority workers to a greater extent. The research was published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine, leading to the creation of a publicly accessible database that provides insight to how these psychosocial hazards are present across occupations and sociodemographic groups. Researchers looked at 19 psychosocial hazards, divided into…

UW-led study reveals disparities in suicide rates among young Asian Americans

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A new study published in JAMA Pediatrics found that suicide rates among young Asian Americans (ages 15-24) vary significantly between different ethnic subpopulations, suggesting that low rates in some groups might be hiding high rates in others. Dr. Anthony L. Bui, the study’s lead author and an acting assistant professor of Pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine, advised that programs aimed at reducing suicide rates among young Asian Americans should attempt to understand the needs of higher-risk…

Initiative, Buerk Center co-host third annual Sacia Digital Health Innovation Workshop

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For the fourth year in a row, a cross-campus collaboration between the Foster School of Business’ Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship and the Population Health Initiative offered students an immersive and hands-on opportunity to workshop new solutions in the growing and dynamic field of digital health. Approximately 30 undergraduate and graduate students from a variety of disciplines came together on November 16, 2024 in the University of Washington’s Hans Rosling Center for Population Health to make the 2024 Sacia Digital Health…

Initiative and Buerk Center co-host an Innovation in Women’s Health panel

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Students gathered in the Hans Rosling Center for Population Health in October 2024 for a panel event focused on Innovations in Women’s Health. This panel event was a partnership between the Population Health Initiative and the Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship’s Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership program (WE Lead). The panel event set out to highlight the crucial role that research, investment and innovations in women’s health plays in addressing centuries of gender disparities in medical research, amplified by guidelines that excluded women…

UW research finds racial and gender bias in AI tools ranking job applicants’ names

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The prevalence of Artificial Intelligence-use in the job market is staggering: applicants are now using artificial intelligence bots to apply for thousands of job listings, and employers are writing job descriptions and evaluating resumes using the latest AI large language models. Despite the potential for increased efficiency and potentially less discriminatory hiring practices, new University of Washington research found significant racial, gender and intersectional bias in how three large language models, or LLMs, ranked applicants’ names from 550 real-world resumes….

Designing better methods to help female athletes train to prevent, recover from injuries

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The popularity of women’s sports has increased substantially in the last year, but higher risk of injury continue to create disparities between male and female athletes. Several common injuries particularly impact women’s sports, with ACL tears found to be two to eight times more common for women than men in the same sports. Jenny Robinson, a University of Washington assistant professor of mechanical engineering, studies how male and female tissues differ in recovery after sports injuries. As endowed chair in…

Population Health Initiative helps to catalyze innovative, interdisciplinary research

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UW News engaged with three Population Health Initiative projects in celebration of the Initiative’s eighth year in action. Since the Initiative began in 2016, it has funded 227 interdisciplinary projects that have collectively realized a range of positive results. The projects previewed include an online program that measures a person’s memory and predicts their risk of memory disorders, a “respondent-driven sampling” method utilized to more accurately count the number of unhoused people in King County and a collaborative effort with…

New study assesses connection between substance use, mental health in college students

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E-cigarettes have become widely used by young adults, including college students, over the past decade due to their variety of flavors, addictive properties and targeted marketing strategies toward this age group. The negative consequences of nicotine on physical health are well-known, yet researchers want to understand the connection between mental health and use of e-cigarettes. Marie Kava, a clinical assistant professor of health systems and population health in the University of Washington School of Public Health, led a study published…

Boeing Innovation Challenge brings UW student teams together around sustainability issues

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The inaugural 2024 Boeing Innovation Challenge featured students teams across all three University of Washington campuses working together to develop technology proposals and business cases that integrated artificial intelligence and machine learning with one of the six goals highlighted in the “2023 Boeing Sustainability Report, Innovation & Clean Tech.” The challenge began in April with information sessions, giving teams a month to register before the competition’s topic of sustainability was released on May 6. Following this announcement, each team had…

Spotlight: Gregory Valentine, a neonatologist, collaborator and innovator

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Most days, Dr. Gregory Valentine wishes he had more than 24 hours to realize his goal of overcoming health disparities amongst newborns around the world. Valentine recently found himself in Africa for two weeks to follow up on his Prevention of Developmental Delay and Xylitol (PDDaX) trial in Malawi and develop a neurodevelopmental program that evaluates early nutritional practices for small and sick newborns in Ethiopia. “What really hits me hard is when I go abroad, I see significant health…