Call for Abstracts
Society for Women's Health Research
Deadline: September 15, 2012
The Society for Women's Health Research (SWHR), a national non-profit organization based in Washington DC, is widely recognized as the thought leader in research on sex differences and is dedicated to improving women's health through advocacy, education, and research.. SWHR encourages all researchers to present their original work at the 2012 What a Difference an X Makes conference this November. The poster session provides an excellent opportunity for networking with colleagues and opens the door for new collaborations. Click here for more information.

CASBS Fellowship Program
Deadline: October 1, 2012
We are writing to announce that The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University (CASBS) is now accepting applications for a new type of residential fellowship for the 2013-2014 academic year: We seek scholars engaged in Translational Behavioral Science - devising ways to apply behavioral science research to address a specific societal problem. If this is of interest to you, please submit your application via our website (no later than 1 October 2012), noting that you are interested in the Translational Behavioral Science Fellowship. We continue to offer our traditional sabbatical fellowship. CASBS provides a supportive, stimulating, and peaceful environment. Most recipients report that a year at CASBS has a transformative effect on their later work. We are also interested in hosting groups of 2-5 scholars who are working on how to solve a specific problem. Online applications will be accepted at the Center's website through 01-Oct 2012 for the 2013-2014 residential fellowship program year. For more information, guidelines, and application requirements, please visit our website.  

 

Call for Papers
Cityscape Symposium on Intersections of Housing & Child/Youth Well-being
Deadline: February 28, 2013
We are very interested in learning about work in this area that could make a contribution to this symposium. We are also interested in reaching out to early career scholars, e.g., graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and junior researchers and academics. Please send us an email indicating your interest in submitting a paper, including a short abstract describing the work and its timeline, and/or recommend colleagues who are doing work in this area that we should contact. We will follow up with researchers whose work fits criteria of topic, quality and timing to invite submission of papers for review. Examples of topics of interest include:
- frameworks for how to understand the impacts of housing, housing policy or neighborhood conditions on child or youth outcomes
- program or policy research seeking to understand the impact of HUD programs or housing policy on children or youth, or seeking to understand the impacts of child/family policy on housing or neighborhood choice or circumstances
- the interactions between housing and neighborhood conditions and systems and other child/youth/family serving systems (e.g., the child welfare system, the juvenile justice system, the public health system, etc).
Papers may be theoretical or empirical and must be original work not published elsewhere. To be considered for publication in this Cityscape Symposium, papers must be submitted by February 28, 2013. All submitted papers will be peer reviewed. In addition to seeking papers, we are seeking peer reviewers. Please also let us know if you would be interested in being a peer reviewer for this Cityscape Symposium. Direct inquiries to Elizabeth Rudd at Elizabeth.C.Rudd@hud.gov and/or to Molly Irwin at Molly.Irwin@acf.hhs.gov. 

Call for Proposals
38th Annual National Institute for Social Work and Human Services in Rural Areas
Deadline: March 1, 2013
The Institute, an ongoing activity of the Rural Social Work Caucus, brings together educators and practitioners to discuss issues relevant to social work practice in small towns and rural communities. This year's theme, Community, Commitment, and Tradition asks you to think about challenges faced within your rural communities, level of commitment within your community to addressing those challenges, and the degree to which tradition is considered when responding to those challenges. Call for presentation proposals will be open through March 1, 2013. Further information can be found here. 

This conference seeks to create a public forum for dialogue on innovative research across disciplines and fields that interrogate the intersections between blackness and queerness. Against an abjuring history, we ask: how might we understand the relationship between blackness and queerness if we first reject the premise of their mutual exclusivity? How might transit between blackness and queerness open up new pathways of thought to engage thinking concerned with a host of issues ranging from agency to temporality to phenomenology to resistance? Are we in a post-black or post-queer moment, and if so, how might a reinterrogation of both blackness and queerness reanimate supposedly deadened modes of inquiry? Click here for more information. 

Improving Health, Health Systems, and Health Policy Around the World
September 24, 2012
The Institute of Medicine's (IOM) Roundtable on Health Literacy will host its next workshop on September 24, at The Conference Center at The New York Academy of Medicine. International Approaches to Health Literacy is the topic of the workshop. Experts will present material on the subject to the roundtable. The workshop is free and open to the public. A webinar will also be available. Click here for more information.

Health IT Enables Quality Measurement, but Obstacles Remain
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)-funded research helped produce a range of improvements in how to measure quality using health information (IT) technologies, which are captured in a new report. Based on the experiences of 17 researchers, the synthesis report, Findings and Lessons from the Enabling Quality Measurement Through Health IT Grant Initiative, incorporates results from AHRQ-funded grants that examined the development of electronic quality measures, methods of capturing and integrating quality data in electronic health records (EHRs), the accuracy of IT-enabled measurements, methods for providing meaningful feedback to clinicians, and ways that health IT could improve the efficiency of quality measurement. To learn more about these projects and read the full report, click here.

Choosing Health Plans in State Health Insurance Exchanges
In 2014, the health insurance exchanges created under the Affordable Care Act will be available in every state as marketplaces for people without employer insurance, as well as small employers. All plans will include the same package of essential health benefits, but will vary by four different levels of "actuarial value," or the percentage of medical costs that a plan pays for on average. The actuarial value of a plan will be indicated by the tiers of bronze, silver, gold, and platinum, and comparative information will be available to help people select plans. A new Commonwealth Fund study looks at out-of-pocket costs that might result from plans with various designs and actuarial values. Click here to read more. 

 

What Works for Disadvantaged and Adolescent Parent Programs: Lessons from Experimental Evaluations of Social Programs and Interventions for Children
A significant body of research documents the poorer outcomes of teen and non-marital parenthood for both children and parents, and recent statistics underscore the strong association between single parenthood and childhood poverty. Child Trends' latest Fact Sheet, What Works for Disadvantaged and Adolescent Parent Programs: Lessons from Experimental Evaluations of Social Programs and Interventions for Children, reviews 20 parenting programs that are geared toward enhancing the parent's development and/or educating disadvantaged and teenage mothers on effective parenting methods. Click here to read more. 

Comment Period on Health IT Enabled Quality Measurement Extended to September 21
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has issued a one-month extension on ways to improve quality measurement through health IT in the Federal Register for "Request for Information (RFI) on Quality Measurement Enabled by Health IT." Originally due by August, 21, the comment period is now open through September 21. The RFI seeks ideas and input from stakeholders such as health IT system developers, vendors, payers, quality measure developers, clinicians, and health care consumers, on successful strategies and remaining challenges in the creation of health IT-enabled quality measure development and reporting. An AHRQ-hosted webinar on July 31 provided background on the RFI and highlights of the report Quality Measurement Enabled by Health IT: Overview, Possibilities, and Challenges. Select to access the background report. Select to access the archived webinar. Select to access the August 22 Federal Register notice extending the comment period.