New news from The Young Research Group will be shared on Dr. Sera Young’s LinkedIn.
Past news
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Water insecurity presents challenges to infant feeding across diverse settings: findings from HWISE
“If there is no water, we cannot feed our children”: The far-reaching consequences of water insecurity on infant feeding practices and infant health across 16 low- and middle-income countries was accepted for publication in the American Journal of Human Biology last week. Led by Dr. Roseanne Schuster (Arizona State University), Margaret Butler (Northwestern University) and…
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We are beginning a formative study on postpartum depression in Cook County
Margaret Butler, a doctoral student in the Department of Anthropology at Northwestern University and a member of the Young Research Group, is currently recruiting participants for her pilot study: A Retrospective Examination of Postpartum Depression Experiences Among Chicagoland Mothers (IRB: STU00210495). We would love you to participate if you… Are over the age of 18…
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Patrick Begins Thwake Multi-Purpose Dam Fieldwork in Makueni County, Kenya
Patrick has completed the first six months of fieldwork in Makueni County, Kenya for his project assessing the health and economic impacts of dam construction on displaced and downstream communities. As part of his PhD dissertation, he aims to: Assess the nutritional, disease, and economic pathways by which construction of Thwake Multipurpose Dam may impact…
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Front Page of UN.org! Our research on food insecurity and breastmilk intake
Last week, findings from our research on the connection between food insecurity and breastmilk were featured on the front page of the United Nation’s website! The article, published in Maternal & Child Nutrition in June of this year, explored infant feeding practices among a community in Kenya in which HIV and household food insecurity are…
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Community Screening of Chocolate Milk: The Documentary in Chicago to celebrate Black Breastfeeding Week 2019
Last week was Black Breastfeeding Week, an annual event that takes place from August 25th– 31st to celebrate breastfeeding among Black women around the world, and highlight the progress being made toward a more equitable breastfeeding landscape in the United States. On Wednesday August 28th, YRG and the Chicago Region Breastfeeding Task Force co-hosted a free,…
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A Call for Better Research on the Impact of Women’s Empowerment on Child Nutrition
Dr. Vicky Santoso has published her first dissertation paper! Our thanks to co-authors Prof Rachel Kerr, Prof John Hoddinott, and Northwestern undergraduate researchers Priya Garigipati & Sophia Olmos for their contributions. We reviewed 62 studies examining the relation between more than 200 unique indicators of empowerment and child nutrition outcomes. We found that these indicators…
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A review of transactional sex for natural resources: Under-researched, overstated, or unique to fishing economies?
Environmental change is projected to decrease the availability of key natural resources. We therefore recently reviewed all published reports of transactional sex for natural resources to understand how resource scarcity, and fluctuations due to climate change, shape behavior. The review, led by my former post-doc and now Prof Katie Fiorella appeared in Global Public Health. Check out our…
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YRG@ANH
In June, Dr. Young, Hollyn Cetrone, and Dr. Vicky Santoso presented recent findings at the Agriculture, Nutrition, & Health (ANH) Academy week in Hyderabad, India. We also hosted a learning lab on using the Household Water InSecurity Experiences (HWISE) Scale. Northwestern senior Hollyn Cetrone gave an oral presentation discussing the connection between depression and agriculture,…
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Standardizing measurements of vaccination adherence!
This March, undergraduate YRG member Casey Benzaken wowed the crowd at the 2019 Human Biology Association Conference in Cleveland. In her poster, she discussed the need for a standardized metric of vaccination maintenance. She then explained how she developed a Vaccination Maintenance Score to do this. Finally, using this score, she applied it to the…
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Rethinking the Value of Unpaid Care Work
In a new article in Gender, Place, and Culture, led by former Cornell grad student and now Prof Youjin Chung, we challenge current notions of unpaid care work, particularly as it is measured in time. Based on participatory research in Singida, Tanzania (yes, as in SNAP-Tz), we propose the need for understanding the conditions and…
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Who wants to measure EBF self-efficacy?
While much of our scale work has been focused on the Household Water InSecurity Experiences (HWISE) Scale, we care lots about IYCF too! To that end, we developed a scale to quantify exclusive breastfeeding self-efficacy: “Adaptation and Psychometric Evaluation of the Breastfeeding Self-Efficacy Scale to Access Exclusive Breastfeeding”. Prior scales were longer, required more resources,…
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HWISE in BMJ Open!
The protocol for HWISE Scale development was published in the British Medical Journal Open! In it, we detail the planned work behind the creation, implementation, and validation across 30 sites globally. “Despite the many plausible consequences for health and well-being, there is no validated tool to measure individual- or household-level water insecurity experiences equivalently across varying…
