Duke Population Research Institute

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The Duke University Population Research Institute (DuPRI) is an interdisciplinary researching organization bringing together researchers, from the biological, economic, mathematical, psychological, statistical, and sociological and policy sciences at Duke. The Institute seeks to enhance Duke's reputation in the area of (demography and population science as well as expand the current boundaries of demographic investigation. DuPRI seeks to produce highly innovative interdisciplinary research in the population sciences and to foster the development of the next generation of researchers. DuPRI currently has four areas of substantive strength: (a) Population Health and Health Disparities, (b) Child and Human Development, (c) Family Demography and (d) Social and Economic Inequality. Within these substantive areas DuPRI faculty use an unusually wide set of methods, many of which have been pioneered by our faculty. Four groups of methods stand out: (a) Statistical and Mathematical Modeling, (b) Measurement of Biological Processes and Analyses of their Influence, (c) Analyzes of Networks and their Influence and (d) Ethnography and Mixed Methods. DuPRI currently has 49 faculty associates from 11 departments, schools and institutes. This application requests funding from the NICHD Population Infrastructure Program-Short-term Support for Rising Programs (SSRP) to support two research cores, administrative and computing and information, and a developmental core. We propose a small set of high value activities that will bring together scholars in order to foster innovation by identifying and exploiting new areas of inquiry uncovered and developed through interdisciplinary communication and collaboration. The proposed cores will lower the administrative costs of seeking and managing external funding freeing researchers to concentrate on science. By itself, this will lead to increased external funding in population research but the ultimate goal is to increase external funding by developing science that would not be possible without DuPRI. Given, the number and quality of population researchers at Duke, its recent record of recruiting top population scientists and its unique data resources (e.g., the leadership on major international panel surveys, on major ethnographic data collection with surveys and the presence of a Census Research Data Center). DuPRI is on its way to becoming a major contributor to the population research community. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: DuPRI studies fundamental issues in population health. These include sources of mortality and morbidity nationally and internationally and the sources of healthy child development.