Workshop on Population, Health and the Environment

Participants

Mohammad Ali

Public Health Sciences Division
Centre for Health and Population Research
Bangladesh

Research Bio
Addressing issues related to health, population and environment by using GIS technology and providing solutions to the problems for improving human health. Current researches include identifying environmental risk factors of cholera, spatial epidemiology of cholera, and identifying environmental niches of the different strains of cholera in an endemic situation. Simplifying methodological complexities in scaling individual level data for transforming those into regionalized variables for issues where individual level risk factors fall short of identifying critical risk factors of the diseases. Identifying local level variation in arsenic contamination in drinking water and the linkage of it with environment and anthropogenic factors. Modeling spatial risk for gender-specific mortality in children in rural areas of Bangladesh in order to reduce overall child mortality. Identifying spatial risk of dengue in the Dhaka City for directing effective control programs within the resource limitations of the country.

Title of thesis or recent research

Are the environmental niches of Vibrio cholerae O139 different from that of Vibrio cholerae El Tor?
Mapping spatial risk of dengue in the Dhaka City

Soumya Alva

Center on Population, Gender and Social Inequality
Department of Sociology, University of Maryland

Research Bio
Soumya Alva is a Ph.D candidate at the Center on Population, Gender and Social Inequality at the Department of Sociology, University of Maryland. She is interested in the areas of gender and demographic change in South-east Asia. Her dissertation research is on gender and labor force participation in Vietnam.

Title of thesis or recent research
Employment in Vietnam: A Gender Equal Division of the Spoils?

Christopher Auffrey

School of Planning
University of Cincinnati

Research Bio
My previous research experience involves three areas: 1) health planning in developing countries; 2) community health planning in the US; and 3) environmental planning in the US.

First, as I described above, my dissertation research used data from the Philippines and Malawi to assess the role of maternal education in facilitating the use of water supply and sanitation to prevent diarrheal disease in young children.

Second, after joining the faculty of the health-planning program in Cincinnati, I was involved with several research projects focusing on community health issues of importance to local officials. I was part of team that used a case study approach to document how one Ohio community was able to implement tobacco control regulations. In another local effort, I lead a study of risk factors for violent criminal activity using the intake database for a juvenile correction facility. I also used geographic information system facilities to measure infant mortality rates in Cincinnati at the census tract level, and describe the large variation in infant mortality among census tracts within the single jurisdiction for which health statistics are normally reported. A follow-up to this research used a simple risk factor model to predict infant mortality rates for each of Cincinnati’s census tracts, and identify tracts with significantly higher and lower than predicted rates.

Third, I have joined with an environmental planning colleague to assess how environmental hazards in the Cincinnati are may be associated with variations in health. Using data from the USEPA’s Toxic Release Inventory and the Ohio EPA Division of Emergency and Remedial Response’s Master Site List, correlation was measured for a census block group’s distance from an environmental hazard and its age-adjusted total mortality rate, controlling for a variety of social and economic factors.

Title of thesis or recent research
Sustainable Urban Development within the Context of Balinese Culture

Development of a Sustainable Development Framework for the Municipality of Hersonissos, Crete, Greece: Impacts on the Natural Environment

Investigating the Social and Institutional Determinants of Infant Mortality in Census Tracts with Infant Mortality Rates Significantly Higher and Lower than Predicted by Socio-Economic Risk Factors

Denise Boswell

College of Urban and Public Affairs
University of New Orleans

Research Bio
Generally, the focus of my research is on the relationship of the built and natural environments to the well being of older people. As a planning scholar and a gerontologist, I am particularly interested in the role that planners play in creating more livable communities that can better accommodate older residents. My dissertation focuses on the citizen participation component of the plan-making process; specifically on involvement of older citizens in the planning process and the elder-friendliness of plans. A recent study assessed the degree to which planners attend to the needs of older adults in the preparation of comprehensive plans. I intend to edit a textbook related to community planning for an aging society, which will have a physical planning emphasis.

Title of thesis or recent research
Dissertation title: Elder-Friendly Plans and Planners’ Effort to Involve Older Citizens in the Plan-Making Process

Marcia Caldas de Castro

Princeton University — Office of Population Research

Research Bio
With a first degree in Statistics and a master degree in Demography, Marcia is a Ph.D. candidate in the Program of Population Studies of the Office of Population Research, Princeton University. Marcia is working with Prof. Burton Singer, studying the determinants and patterns of malaria transmission in the Brazilian Amazon. She is using spatial statistical analysis and GIS to develop a comprehensive spatial epidemiology model, which will both describe the ecological and demographic dynamics of the occupation process, and serve as the basis for future policies in the area.

Title of thesis or recent research
Malaria foci and colonization process on the Amazon frontier

Daniel Chatman

UCLA Department of Urban Planning.

Research Bio
Currently I am working on two research projects. The first is a study of a regional water agency whose governance structure has come under scrutiny as the service population has grown significantly without many new infrastructure investments, leaving future reliable provision of water open to question. The second project is an investigation of a little researched topic, the influence of workplace employment density and share of retail/service employment on the propensity to make trips by non-auto modes. This project is of my own design using Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey (NPTS) data; I recently presented preliminary results of this work at the Associated Collegiate Schools of Planning Conference. I plan to extend the analysis to other regional travel diary data sets with potential for spatial analysis using a GIS.

Before being admitted into the UCLA Urban Planning PhD program in 1999, I worked for a small consulting firm on city and county projects including fiscal and economic impact analyses, market feasibility studies, AB 1600 development fee documentation. Redevelopment projects, environmental impact reports, and general plans. I initially developed my research interest in land use and transportation planning when consulting to the Santa Clara County Valley Transportation Authority on its 2020 transportation plan, analyzing effects of land use patterns and policy in Santa Clara County on transportation system efficiency over time. Prior to that I was a research assistant at the Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies, working on a project to analyze national building code formulation processes and alternative benefit-cost approaches. I also provided GIS support on a study of historical patterns of segregation in U.S. cities for the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy at Harvard.

Title of thesis or recent research
I recently presented a paper entitled The Influence of Employment Density and Mix on Personal Tripmaking by Workers. My dissertation will explore three dimensions of attempts to mitigate the congestion and pollution impacts of travel through manipulation of urban form. The first section will investigate the relationship between urban form and travel behavior, through an empirical study, joining an overlay of data on land use zoning/use to geocoded travel diary data in two metropolitan areas (possibly the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas). The second section will investigate the influence of large-scale land use policies (such as growth management or zoning) on land use patterns, and the third will take a case study approach in illuminating the relationship between governance structure (such as regional planning agencies versus total local control of land use) and implementation of land use policy.

Anoshua Chaudhuri

Graduate Student (Economics)
University of Washington

Tim Clary

UCLA, PhD candidate in the department of geography
Research fellow at the Centers for Disease Control Office of Research and Methodology

Research Bio
My current research interests would fall under the broad heading of environmental epidemiology. My dissertation research involves examining the area of the northern Mexican border to see how public health was affected in that area as it industrialized and numerous persons migrated to the region for employment. Previous research has involved applying geographic techniques to epidemiological research to investigate the affect of pesticides on pancreatic cancer. I am also involved in a project looking at how the location and type of liquor store in a neighborhood affects health outcomes in that same area. Other research I currently am doing involves examining urban/rural health differences in workers in California.

Title of thesis or recent research
PhD dissertation "The Mexican Industrialization Program and Its Effects on Public Health in Urban Centers along the Northern Mexican Border, 1979-1996"

Randall Crane

Euripedes DeOliveira

UCLA Urban Planning Department

Research Bio
Commercial and industrial real estate appraisal research and analysis in Southern California; community outreach research identifying constituent groups within Greater Los Angeles; research and analysis to develop comprehensive pollution sources in the community of Pacoima, Los Angeles; research and project draft for reconfiguration of commercial strip within Panorama City, Los Angeles; research for Environmental Impact Report for the Oxnard Towncenter, Oxnard; research and analysis of growth and management growth in the communities of North Hollywood/Valley Village, Los Angeles.

Title of thesis or recent research
Regional and International Development Growth in the city of Sao Paulo (Brazil).

Dirgha J. Ghimire

Population Studies Center, Institute for Social Research, and Department of Sociology at the University of Michigan

Sharon Ghuman

University of Pennsylvania, Graduate Group in Demography

Research Bio
In my research I have examined how gender inequality in south and southeast Asia relates to kinship and marriage systems, features of women¹s employment and demographic outcomes such as infant mortality, at the individual and community level. My most recent work explores the measurement properties of survey items commonly used to index women¹s power and autonomy. In particular, we compare husband and wife assessments of the wife¹s power and attempt to discern whether disagreement on a supposedly objective level of the wife¹s position is due to items having different meanings to husbands and wives and/or due to random measurement error. For more information, see www.pop.upenn.edu/swaf.

Title of thesis or recent research
The Relationship between Female Autonomy and Infant and Child Mortality: Evidence from India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand.

Deanna Gordon

UC-Berkeley Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics

Research Bio
I am currently a research assistant for the Bay Area International Group, which works on economic and health issues in international development, focusing on reproductive health. I am now working on papers on the diversification of reproductive health programs and the integration of environmental and reproductive health programs. I am about to begin research on the socio-economic impacts of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa.

Title of thesis or recent research
Case Study of the Lake Tanganyika Cathment Reforestation and Education Project in Kigoma Tanzania.

Sara Laufer

University of California, Berkeley, Department of Demography.

Research Bio
My work in recent years is an interdisciplinary synthesis of qualitative and quantitative study to more fully understand disability as an ecological phenomenon–with social, biological, environmental, and behavioral components–and as an increasing concern globally as the population ages (and thus as age-related disability prevalence rates increase). Specifically, the questions I am trying to answer include the following:

How can the fields of, in particular, demography and public health quantify disability patterns, their comorbid relationships, and the potential impact of creative and viable interventions to compress morbidity?

What are the most effective intervention strategies for people with different types of disabilities, at distinct phases of the life cycle, facing varying and dynamic environmental constraints, and from dissimilar cultural backgrounds?

What labor force, migratory, and demographic process (e.g., birth, death, and marriage rates) behaviors are influenced by the presence or absence of disability, and what are the magnitudes of these adaptations?

Who has the power to define disability as a social or medical construct, and what are the ramifications at individual and cultural levels as a result of such a determination?

Title of thesis or recent research
Most recent working papers:

"Demographic Considerations about Disability and the Labor Force: Recent Technological Advances and Demographic Findings to Inform Labor Force Policy for People with Disabilities," December, 2000.

"When Silence Isn’t Golden: Medicare Benefits for Hearing Aids as Attractive Public Health Interventions Against Hearing Disability and its Comorbid Conditions," December, 2000.

Lucie Laurian

Department of City and Regional Planning - University of North Carolina

Research Bio
I have research experience working in France, Chapel Hill, and in New Zealand. Beside my Ph.D., most of my training took place in France, in sociology and demography. In the course of my studies, I conducted research on urban populations and urban waste management (more specifically on waste production in Paris since 1945, and on the first waste management plans for the city in the 19th century). In Chapel Hill, as a trainee at the Carolina Population Center, I conducted research on migration with Dr. Richard Bilsborrow. I was involved in data cleaning, managing numerous datasets, multi-level analysis, and interpreting and writing findings. Working on my dissertation, I wrote funding proposals, developed research instruments, organized data collection and data analysis. Currently, I work as a research assistant on a New Zealand-based project on the implementation of community environmental plans, I was involved in developing the research design and methodology, and the research instruments, and I currently support the data collection.

Title of thesis or recent research
Working title of dissertation: "Cleaning up Superfund Sites, Residents' Risk Perceptions and Responses"

Frederick Meyerson

Watson Institute for International Studies - Brown University

Jonathan Nash

The Population Reference Bureau — Population, Health, and Environment Program

Research Bio
Jonathan Nash is a policy analyst with the Population, Health, and Environment program at the Population Reference Bureau (PRB) in Washington D.C. Mr. Nash graduated summa cum laude from Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs with a Masters degree in Public Affairs with a concentration in International Environmental Policy and Analysis and a B.S. in Natural Resources Management from the University of Michigan. While at Indiana University, he assisted in the instruction of several graduate level courses on statistics and environmental economics. Previously, he was a Peace Corps volunteer in Honduras for three years where he worked an Environmental Educator and Wildlands Manager and assisted in the setting up of health clinics. Over the last five years, Mr. Nash has worked on Environmental Protection issues with the U.S. Navy in Hawaii and as an Environmental Health Field Technician with the Ventura County Environmental Health Department (California).

Title of thesis or recent research
Recent Research: Social Dynamics of Deforestation in Developing Countries, Integrated Conservation and Development Projects: Ecotourism, and the use of the Internet to promote networking and exchange of information on population, health, and environmental issues

Andrew Noymer

University of California at Berkeley
Departments of Sociology & Demography

Research Bio
My full CV is available on the web at http://demog.berkeley.edu/~andrew

I am a PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley, studying Sociology and Demography. I studied biology as an undergraduate, and I have a master's degree in medical demography from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. I have done work on mathematical models of measles epidemics and of rumor transmission, and I am working on several empirical projects on male-female mortality differentials.

Title of thesis or recent research
Sub urbanization and income inequality in the United States, 1980-90.

Tony Nyong

Department of Geography and Planning, Faculty of Environmental Sciences, University of Jos, Jos, Plateau State, Nigeria.

Research Bio:

Research Assistant (1993 — 1998) — Joint Research project between McMaster University, Canada and University of Jos, Nigeria, on developing community-based, culturally-appropriate and cost-effective strategies for sustainable water development in semi-arid northern Nigeria, as well as strengthen their indigenous capacity for water resource management. I collected primary data through questionnaire administration, satellite imageries and developed a GIS for the project. In addition, I modelled how population parameters adjust to water availability in the region.

Research Assistant (1987 — 1993) — Joint research project between the University of Durham, England and the University of Jos, Nigeria. The project explored the interrelationships between land use, population, and social and economic change in former mining communities on the Jos Plateau of Nigeria. I coordinated the data collection, storage and retrieval exercise and maintained a GIS for the project. I also carried out individual researches on the project, such as monitoring the rate of loss of agricultural lands to urban uses on parts of the Jos plateau.
Principal Investigator - Spatial Trends and Patterns of fertility in Nigeria. The research team is combining household survey data from the DHS, administrative records, digital maps, and remotely-sensed data into an integrated socio-spatial data set to conduct empirical research using GIS and spatial statistical methods into the interrelationship between fertility, socio-economic, cultural and environmental processes in Nigeria. Research incorporating GIS and spatial techniques holds significant potential for the discovery of new knowledge in this area, by contributing to the correct specification and estimation of quantitative fertility models.

Title of thesis or recent research
Domestic Water Demand in Rural Semi-Arid Northern Nigeria

Lorella Palazzo

Department of Sociology University of Washington

Research Bio
Most of my research to date has used quantitative methods to investigate demographic and health-related phenomena. In one study, my co-authors and I explore the ecology of mortality for the black and non-black male population in Chicago between 1989 and 1991. Two projects in which I am involved as a Research Assistant with the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Washington focus on the provision of primary health care to people throughout Washington State, with particular attention to rural and other underserved areas. Lastly, my dissertation examines under what conditions alternative health care practices become integrated into the mainstream health care system. I focus on the US by analyzing the professional evolution of chiropractors, naturopaths, and acupuncturists, and the institutional context in which these groups operate.

Title of thesis or recent research
Economic Distress and Cause-of-Death Patterns for Black and Non-Black Men: Evidence from Chicago, 1990

Integrating Alternative Providers into the US Healthcare System: History, Process, and Current Status.

Sara Peracca

Sociology Department, Population Studies Center, University of Michigan

Research Bio
For the last 10 years, I have focused my research and other professional efforts on understanding societal issues in the developing world. I have examined such diverse topics as Thai attitudes towards female sex workers and religious differentials in fertility in Thailand. My primary areas of interest include population–environment dynamics, gender and sexuality, education, and reproductive health/family planning. My diverse training in public health, resource ecology management and sociology allow me to view potential research questions from several different disciplinary perspectives. I have collected and analyzed data, both qualitative and quantitative, from countries in many regions of the world.

Currently, I am examining the effects of the recent economic downturn in Thailand on education and reproductive health. I am using nationally representative data to understand if any change in educational enrollment and/or attainment of adolescents has taken place since the downturn. In terms of health, using data collected in collaboration with researchers at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand, I am examining reproductive health service provision with in-depth interviews and contraceptive use including abortion since the downturn with survey data.

Title of thesis or recent research
The Economic Crisis and Individual Well-being in Thailand: An Examination of Health and Education

Gerry Potutan

Research Institute for Mindanao Culture (RIMCU), Xavier University, Ateneo de Cagayan

Research Bio
POTUTAN, G.E. 2000. "Interaction of Young Social Scientists and Medical Practitioners in Health Care Units", In: Proceedings of the First National Conference on Health Social Science, sponsored by the Philippine Health Social Science Association (PHSSA), October 13-15, 2000, Manila Midtown Hotel, Manila.

GERALD E. POTUTAN, HOLMER R.J., SCHNITZLER W.H. 2000. "Urban Agriculture in Cagayan de Oro: A Favorable Response of City Government and NGOs" in Growing Cities, Growing Food, Urban Agriculture on the Policy Agenda: A Reader on Urban Agriculture. Nico Bakker and Marrielle Dubbeling (eds.). Germany: Deutsche Stiftung fur Internationale Entwicklung (DSE), pages 413-428.

GERALD E. POTUTAN, JANUBAS, L.G., ARNADO, J.M., HOLMER, R.J., SCHNITZLER, W.H. 1997. "Peri-urban Vegetable Production, Consumption and Marketing in Cagayan de Oro City, Southern Philippines" In: The Kasetsart Journal of Natural Sciences, Volume 32 Number 5, Bangkok, Thailand: Kasetsart University Press, pages 61-66.

GERALD E. POTUTAN, JANUBAS, L.G., ARNADO, J.M., HOLMER, R.J., SCHNITZLER, W.H. 1998. "The Profile of Vegetable Production, Consumption, and Marketing in Cagayan de Oro", In: Proceedings of the 11th NOMCARRD Regional Symposium on Research and Development. July 28-29, 1999. Claveria, Misamis Oriental, Philippines.

GERALD E. POTUTAN, HOLMER, R.J., SCHNITZLER, W.H. 1999. "Cagayan de Oro Philippines - growing cities, growing food". Poster presented at DSE/GTZ, International Conference on Urban Agriculture: Growing Cities Growing Food, Urban Agriculture on Policy, jointly organized by DSE, SIDA, CTA, and ACPA with support from BMZ, ETC, and GTZ, October 11-15, 1999, Hotel Palco, Havana, Cuba.

Title of thesis or recent research
"Gender Roles in the Emerging City Farms of Cagayan de Oro, Philippines"

Shanti Rabindran

Department of Economics MIT

Michael Reilly

UC-Berkeley

Jules Reinhart

UC-Berkeley

Keith Robinson

University of Michigan

Luis Rubalcava

Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, A.C.

Jill Sourial

UCLA Urban Planning

Sukamdi

Population Studies Center Gadjah Mada University Faculty of Geography Gadjah Mada University

Research Bio
At the beginning of my career as researcher I involved on formal demography research activities such as population projection and indirect demographic estimation. Then I move to wider coverage of interest including population and environment interaction, urbanization, labor force studies, urban informal sector and internal and international migration. Now I am interested to deepen my understanding on rural transformation.

Title of thesis or recent research
Structural transformation in rural areas in Indonesia

Shailender Swaminathan

Research Associate, ISR, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor,
Ph.D, University of Southern California, 2000

Graciela Turuel

Universidad Iberoamericana, Department of Economics

Peng Xujian

The Institute of Population Research, Renmin (People's) University of China

Research Bio
I began to work in Institute of Population Research, People's University in China since I got my Master degree in Economics in1994. Since July 1994, I have been heavily involved in a wide range of population-economic surveys and research projects, which are largely towards understanding the actual situation and regional variations in and interactions between population, economy, environment, sustainable development and policy implementation and effectiveness.

While I was heavily involved in the research on population and economy, and population and environment, I show a strong interest in Population, health and environment because of the serious environmental pollution in China. Since 1998, I began to conduct research on this field. In December 1999, I submitted and delivered a paper titled "Environmental Pollution and Human Health-- An analysis of Environmental Pollution Situation and its impacts on Human Health in China" in the Second National Conference of Population, Resource, Environmental and Development in China. The paper received good evaluation and was collected in the Supplement to Population Research, which is the core journal of Demography in China. In July 2000, My paper "How far is the food pollution to us---the Impact on Human Health of the Food Pollution as Resulted From the Environmental Pollution", published by China Woman News, received the extensive concern from the Public.

The research projects that I have participated are list below:

A Study on China's Population Development and Fertility Policy in the 21st Century, National Social Science Foundation: 2-year project, participant, 1998-2000.
Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Family Planning Program in China, China State Family Planning Commission: 2-year project, participant, 1997-1999.
Migration of the Surplus Labors in Agriculture in the Suburbs of Beijing and Its Economic Effects, Beijing Social Science Foundation: 2-year project, participant, 1995-1997.
Consequences and Countermeasures of Fertility Decline in China, Beijing Social Science Foundation: 3-year project, participant, 1993-1996.
Population, Environment and Sustainable Development in China, UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund): 5-year project, participant, 1990-1995.

Title of thesis or recent research
The Impact of Air Pollution on Health--a Case Study in Linfen City, Shanxi Province in China.

Scott Yabiku

Population Studies Center, the University of Michigan

Research Bio
I am a Ph.D. candidate in the department of sociology at the University of Michigan. My research interests include family behaviors in both the United States and Nepal, such as marriage, childbearing, contraception, divorce, and intergenerational relationships.

Title of thesis
Marital Timing and Social Change in Nepal

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