CU Population Center gets $2 million from NIH

The University of Colorado at Boulder’s Institute of Behavioral Science was recently awarded $2 million by the National Institutes of Health to support the CU Population Center for the next five years.

The CU Population Center is an interdisciplinary group of social-science scholars and professionals engaged in research and training on population issues.

CUPC affiliates explore demographic processes in the United States and around the world.

The CU Population Center supports research in three thematic areas, all representing social problems of policy importance. These include social dimensions of human health, population dynamics and the natural environment, and human migration.

Recent accomplishments include breakthrough studies on social conditions that facilitate or inhibit the genetic influence on smoking and obesity, the impact of HIV/AIDS on poor, elderly, rural South Africans in the context of emerging antiretroviral therapy policies, the impact of environmental quality on household health and mortality, the contribution of smoking to changing mortality disparities, and multiregional demographic projections using indirect estimation.

In addition, three major long-term projects reflect the CUPC’s  leadership in large-scale, innovative, international population research.

The center is conducting longitudinal studies using demographic surveillance in Matlab, Bangladesh, and in Agincourt, South Africa.

The CUPC is also helping to train a new generation of African scholars in Kenya and South Africa through the African Population Studies Research and Training Program.

Other international projects illustrate the global reach of CUPC scholarship. These include research on demographic response to the Indian Ocean tsunami in Sri Lanka, health behaviors among adolescents in Nairobi slums, effects of climate change on South African livelihoods, as well as both Mexican and European Union migration patterns.

The Institute of Behavioral Science’s broader Population Program administers a graduate certificate in demography, offering disciplinary-based CU graduate students the opportunity for interdisciplinary exploration of population studies.

In 2005, the CUPC received a developmental grant to create the foundation for an NIH center. The new grant allows CUPC to become a full-fledged center. It includes 46 affiliates, including tenured faculty members, research associates and graduate research assistants.

The center is led by Fred Pampel, a CU professor of sociology.

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