Simpson Center for the Humanities
The Simpson Center for the Humanities fosters intellectual discovery across boundaries, supporting crossdisciplinary exchange among scholars at the University of Washington and beyond. It is known internationally for its leadership in the digital humanities and public scholarship.
As one of the largest and most comprehensive humanities centers in the United States, the Simpson Center offers University of Washington scholars a rich spectrum of opportunities for intellectual community. The Center supports research and collaboration that allows scholars to build networks nationally and internationally.
The Center’s mission supports four objectives:
- Crossdisciplinary research and inquiry
- Initiatives in the humanities at the leading edge of change
- Innovative study at the graduate level
- Scholarship that reaches audiences beyond the academy
The Simpson Center supports an expansive definition of the humanities that includes collaboration with social scientists, artists, and scholars across disciplines. Recent projects have examined global health partnerships, crowdfunding for health care, the urban environment, and many other topics related to population health.
United States
Exploring phenomena from the molecular to the global level, MAGH uniquely integrates approaches from social, cultural, medical, and biocultural anthropology into a comprehensive framework for understanding and addressing local and global health issues. With anthropology faculty renowned for their scholarship on population and health, and links to programs across campus addressing global health, the area of emphasis provides a venue for new insights, new approaches, and new opportunities for understanding health and well-being.
The mission of training in Medical Anthropology & Global Health is to provide a new generation of scholars and future health professionals with the skills necessary to identify and operationalize methods, analytical frameworks, and campus-community partnerships that contribute to addressing health challenges around the world. This track is unique in US undergraduate education. We also offer graduate training, and the possibility of a concurrent PhD/MPH.
The Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis and Air Pollution (MESA Air) is designed to examine the relationship between air pollution exposures and the progression of cardiovascular disease over time. The United States Environmental Protection Agency funds the ten-year study, which involves thousands of participants, representing diverse areas of the United States.
The MESA Air Pollution study is headquartered at the University of Washington, but many other institutions are also involved.
The Molecular Engineering & Sciences Institute brings together faculty teams from across the University of Washington campus to catalyze translational research in the Clean Tech and Biotech areas.
It is intended to serve both as an intellectual accelerator to bring fresh approaches and ideas to societal challenges and as a physical incubator where interdisciplinary teams can come together in a shared space.
The University of Washington Nanotoxicology Center (UW Nanotox), in concert with the National Institute of Environmental Health Centers for Nanotechnology Health Implications Research (NCNHIR) consortium, develops standardized techniques, analytical tools, and mathematical models to assess and predict the toxicity and environmental impact of engineered nanomaterials.
The Native American Law Center promotes the development of Indian law, and encourages Native Americans, and others with an interest in Indian law, to attend law school.
It also acts as a resource to Indian tribes, other governments and individuals in the Pacific Northwest, Alaska and across the country.
The Northwest Center for Occupational Health and Safety (NWCOHS) is a multi-component training program dedicated to prevention of work-related injury and illness in the four federal Region X states of Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington by providing academic training for professional workforce needs and professional education and research services to employers, workers, and health and safety professionals.
Since 1977, the NWCOHS has been funded as a National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Education and Research Center (ERC), the only one in the region.
NWCPHP provides training, research, evaluation, and communications services to support public health organizations. It is the outreach arm of the University of Washington School of Public Health, bringing academia and practice communities together. The Center does this by offering valuable academic resources to the practice community and conveying everyday-practice perspectives to academia.
Its scope includes provides training, research, and evaluation for state, local, and tribal public health in six Northwest states—Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming.
A multi-disciplinary center at the University of Washington School of Dentistry that has been built on strong community partnerships. A common goal of the research conducted by Center investigators is to develop and disseminate practical, evidence-based approaches to reduce oral health problems experienced by poor, minority or rural children and adults who suffer a disproportionate share of oral disease.
The Northwest Climate Science Center (NW CSC) combines academic expertise with federal resources to advance climate science development and delivery for managers and policy makers in the Northwest region.
In 2010 the NW CSC was established by the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) to help safeguard the region’s natural and cultural resources by providing managers and policy-makers across Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Western Montana with timely, relevant, accessible climate science.
The Northwest Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit seeks to reduce environmental health risks to children by providing training for health professionals, communities and families through consultation, educational activities, and referrals.
The PEHSU is a North American network of experts dedicated to providing expertise and training for health professionals, trainees and the public on environmentally related health effects in children.
PEHSU faculty are academically based at university hospitals and include pediatricians, toxicologists, exposure scientists and others.
The Occupational Epidemiology and Health Outcomes Program uses workers’ compensation data and its own research to improve medical care, update treatment guidelines, and provide information on treatment outcomes to injured workers, employers, and physicians.
PACES in Epilepsy is a consumer-driven, evidenced based self-management intervention for adults with chronic epilepsy. The prograim aims to educate participants about epilepsy and its co-morbidities in order to promote improved problem-solving, and to apply cognitive-behavior therapy principles to managing stress and sadness.
We have researched and validated the program for both face-to-face and telehealth applications, and are in the process of adapting the program for people in rural/remote areas and Veterans. We are actively seeking partnership for knowledge translation/program implementation and sustention, as well as expansion of our work to other populations (e.g., people with MS).
The Pacific Northwest Agricultural Safety and Health Center conducts research and promotes best health and safety practices for Northwest producers and workers in farming, fishing and forestry.
Affiliated with the UW School of Public Health, PNASH integrates expertise from multiple disciplines, institutions and community partners. Areas of emphasis include new production technologies and the needs of under-served and vulnerable populations.
Partners for Our Children works to improve the lives of vulnerable children and families in Washington State, especially those touched by the child welfare system. But they can’t do that alone. That’s why they work closely with partners to get the right information into the right hands – those making important decisions about child welfare practice and policy.
PORPP’s Vision:
To be a global leader in generating knowledge to improve individual and population health through transformative learning, research, and dissemination about the effectiveness, safety, and value of medical products, services, and policies.
For twenty years PORPP has been a leader in studying, disseminating and informing policy about the impact of pharmaceuticals and other medical care on individual and population health and training the next generation of outcomes researchers. We are primed to morph into an higher organizational unit (a center or institute) in the coming year. We look forward to sustaining the
The Race and Justice Clinic works to disrupt the systemic over-representation of youth of color in school discipline and the juvenile justice system by empowering youth and their support networks through community education and direct representation.
The Relational Poverty Network convenes a community of scholars, teachers, policy makers and activists, working within and beyond academia, to develop conceptual frameworks, research methodologies, and pedagogies for the study of relational poverty.
Launched at a historical moment of dramatic income inequality and enforced austerity in the global North, the RPN thinks across geographical boundaries to foster a transnational and comparative approach to poverty research.
The Rural/Underserved Opportunities Program (RUOP) is a four-week, elective immersion experience in community medicine for students between their first and second years of medical school. During their four-week rotation, students live in rural or urban underserved communities throughout Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho (WWAMI). They work side-by-side with local physicians providing health care to underserved populations.
Administered by the UW Department of Family Medicine, RUOP is a collaborative effort of the UW School of Medicine, WWAMI campuses and the Area Health Education Centers. It is also supported by the Washington and Idaho Academies of Family Physicians. For more information, contact the RUOP Administrative Offices.
The overarching mission of the School Mental Health Assessment, Research, and Training (SMART) Center is to promote quality improvement of school-based mental/behavioral health services, thereby preventing or ameliorating mental health problems more effectively and promoting the social-emotional and academic development and success of youth across school, home, and community contexts.
Assessment of health and quality of life of vulnerable populations including people with disabilities. Tracking of US national health goals with years of healthy life indicator.
The purpose of this research group is to examine social and racial inequalities that results in health disparities. This UW Bothell-based group examines the social context, and social predictors of poor health across multiple chronic health indicators across a diverse group of foreign born and native born respondents.
A key focus of this group is to examine the relationship between perceived and actual racial/ethnic discrimination in health.
The Social Development Research Group (SDRG) seeks to investigate and promote healthy behaviors and positive social development in youth and adults.
SDRG is a recognized leader in the field of prevention research. Its efforts to understand how risk and protective factors influence development have resulted in hundreds of articles in peer-reviewed journals and led to the development of tested and effective interventions.
Our core works on social, behavioral and public health related research supporting HIV prevention and care.
The specific aims of the Sociobehavioral and Prevention Research Core are to support:
HIV Prevention Research, including technical assistance to CFAR investigators, organizing forums for interdisciplinary research community development, expanding our substantive expertise to include addictions, substance use, and mental health research.
Local Community Outreach, including working with CFAR’s Community Action Board to pursue community-based research priorities and translational opportunities, taking advantage of our institutional ties to Seattle & King County Public Health to stimulate collaborative research projects and evidence-based policy development.
International Community Outreach, including working with the International Core to identify collaborative research and translational opportunities with the new University of Nairobi Center for HIV Prevention and Research (UNCHIVPR) on translational research for HIV prevention. Integrating social, behavioral, and clinical science is increasingly necessary for progress in controlling HIV, and the Sociobehavioral and Prevention Research Core works to assure this synergy by providing support to behavioral, clinical, and social scientists in their research.
The UW Superfund Research Program is comprised of an interdisciplinary team of faculty and graduate students from University of Washington departments of: Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, Epidemiology, Genome Sciences, Environmental Chemistry, Civil & Environmental Engineering and Pharmacology.
UW SRP investigators focus on neurotoxic metals cadmium, manganese and arsenic. These metals commonly occur at waterways and hazardous waste sites, negatively impacting human health and ecosystem functions
The Technology & Social Change Group (TASCHA) at the University of Washington Information School explores the design, use, and effects of information and communication technologies in communities facing social and economic challenges.
With experience in over 50 countries, TASCHA brings together a multidisciplinary network of researchers, practitioners, and policy experts to advance knowledge, create public resources, and improve policy and program design.
Created in 2013 by the state legislature, the Washington Ocean Acidification Center at UW connects researchers, policymakers, industry, and others across Washington.
Their goals aim to advance the science of ocean acidification and provide a foundation for proactive strategies and policies to protect marine ecosystems and the people connected to them.
I work at the intersection of autism research, technology development, and big-data approaches.
Our laboratory, the Seattle Children’s Innovative Technologies Laboratory, focuses on a combination of biomarker development, assistive technologies, and novel technology-based therapeutics.
Methods of primary interest include eye tracking, functional near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), mobile applications, and social robotics.
Projects of note include identification and refinement of prognostic markers associated with autism (eye tracking, NIRS, EEG), development of advanced multimedia screening technologies for developmental issues, and application of novel devices (augmented reality, virtual reality, social robotics) for understanding mechanism and behavioral change.
The Healthy Brain Research Network (HBRN) is a thematic network within the CDC Prevention Research Centers Program that brings together interdisciplinary expertise from six leading academic institutions across the U.S. and draws upon the collaborative strengths of established academic-community partnerships. HBRN efforts are informed by the work of The Healthy Brain Initiative: The Public Health Road Map for State and National Partnerships, 2013–2018 (Road Map), and strategically align with other national priorities as identified in the Institute of Medicine Report on Cognitive Aging, Progress in Understanding and Opportunities for Action; The National Alzheimer’s Action Plan, and Healthy People 2020 objectives. UW serves the Coordinating Center for the HBRN.
NWCPHP provides training, research, evaluation, and communications services to support public health organizations. It is the outreach arm of the University of Washington School of Public Health, bringing academia and practice communities together. The Center does this by offering valuable academic resources to the practice community and conveying everyday-practice perspectives to academia.
Its scope includes provides training, research, and evaluation for state, local, and tribal public health in six Northwest states—Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming.
The Health Promotion Research Center (HPRC) conducts community-based research that promotes the health and well-being of middle-aged and older adults, particularly those with lower incomes and in ethnic/cultural minority populations most at risk of health disparities.
The Center for Ecogenetics and Environmental Health (CEEH) is dedicated to contributing to science-based changes in regulatory policy and public health or medical practice that result in a reduction in the burden of environmentally induced diseases. Through discovery of new and important genetic and environmental factors that contribute to the causes of chronic diseases, new approaches to prevention, early diagnosis and effective treatments can be developed that will substantially reduce the social burden and health care costs associated with premature disease and death from environmentally related diseases.
The UW Superfund Research Program is comprised of an interdisciplinary team of faculty and graduate students from University of Washington departments of: Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, Epidemiology, Genome Sciences, Environmental Chemistry, Civil & Environmental Engineering and Pharmacology.
UW SRP investigators focus on neurotoxic metals cadmium, manganese and arsenic. These metals commonly occur at waterways and hazardous waste sites, negatively impacting human health and ecosystem functions
CHANGE collaboratively develops and promotes innovative approaches to understanding and managing the risks of global environmental change.
CHANGE conducts research and policy analysis, education and training, and technical assistance and capacity building, integrating health, environmental, and social sciences.
CHANGE focuses on health outcomes associated with the consequences of global environmental changes, such as extreme weather and climate events, water and food security, and infectious diseases.
The University of Washington Nanotoxicology Center (UW Nanotox), in concert with the National Institute of Environmental Health Centers for Nanotechnology Health Implications Research (NCNHIR) consortium, develops standardized techniques, analytical tools, and mathematical models to assess and predict the toxicity and environmental impact of engineered nanomaterials.
The Center works to understand the mechanisms that define children’s susceptibility to pesticides and air pollution. Identifying the implications of this susceptibility for developmental and learning trajectories, and partnering with communities to translate the Center’s findings into risk communication, risk management and public health prevention strategies.
The University of Washington Center for Clear Air Research (UW CCAR) is focused on the cardiovascular health effects of near-roadway pollution, a complex mixture of components that come from vehicle emissions and the road surface, and vary by physical aging, atmospheric conditions, and photochemical reactions. UW CCAR is funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The Innovative Programs Research Group (IPRG) conducts brief early interventions with youth and adults struggling with behavioral issues, but who have not yet accessed relevant services.
Its projects assess the effectiveness of innovative and accessible means to impact behavior change or reduce barriers to the delivery of effective social and mental health services.
We conduct research on interventions to promote nurturing early parent child relationships in families with infants birth to five that are living in adverse circumstances. Families may be experiencing adult mental health and substance use, poverty, immigration and refuge status, and/or child maltreatment and neglect.
Washington Medical-Legal Partnership (MLP) helps people in vulnerable populations understand and secure their legal rights regarding safe housing, adequate schooling, medical needs and more. It partners with lawyers, doctors, social workers, and other medical staff to remove barriers to good health.
AIMS (Advancing Integrated Mental Health Solutions) Center faculty and staff at the University of Washington have worked for over 20 years to develop, test and implement an approach called Collaborative Care to treat the large numbers of people suffering unnecessarily from mental illness. Collaborative Care is an integrated care model that brings high quality mental health care to primary care clinics and other familiar settings. Its strength lies in treating persistent mental health conditions like depression and anxiety that require systematic follow-up for patients to get better.
Based at the University of Washington Bothell, the Center for Education Data and Research (CEDR) will focus on studying the complex relationships between K-12 education policies and practices, social services geared toward students, and student outcomes.
While it will not focus exclusively on Washington State, CEDR will concentrate its efforts on helping build the capacity across Washington State to ask the right questions, frame issues and policy options, and engage in research and data analyses that make good use of the state’s expanding databases.
The overarching mission of the School Mental Health Assessment, Research, and Training (SMART) Center is to promote quality improvement of school-based mental/behavioral health services, thereby preventing or ameliorating mental health problems more effectively and promoting the social-emotional and academic development and success of youth across school, home, and community contexts.
Sarah Elwood and Victoria Lawson are collaborating on relational poverty research and teaching. Social science research on impoverishment, equity and well-being recognizes that questions of health can never be separated from questions about social, political and economic context. Our work understands poverty as more than just an economic marker and population as more than demographic categories. Instead, our work and members of the Relational Poverty Network analyze poverty as constituted by interlocking processes including socio-economic processes around the globe, cultural politics of representation, processes of racialization, gender, nationality and ability and processes of governing, norming – of making ‘common sense’.
Our own recent research focuses on poverty politics, as crucial to understanding population equity and questions of well-being/health. Poverty politics entail projects of government that identify problems, justify interventions, and inaugurate solutions that stabilize dominant forms of economic and political power AND politics that refuse existing orders of social (de)valuation (that rely on the categorization, exclusion, repression and criminalization of difference) through practices of illiberal embodiment and disidentification which rehumanize people outside of racial capitalist orders. We also study alliances across difference as potential sites for advancing unprecedented and creative challenges to impoverishment might emerge from solidarities across race, class, gender, ability, sexuality, and other axes of difference. A third strand of our work addresses epistemologies and methodologies of studying poverty. Our work begins from an epistemology of poverty that integrates multiple causal processes as they interrelate differentially across time and space. Our approach builds bridges between policymakers, researchers, and communities to build innovative concepts for poverty research.
The University and its affiliated institutions, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and Seattle Children’s Hospital, are widely regarded as leaders among the premiere biomedical research institutions in the world, with great strengths in the constellation of areas crucial for success in stem cell research and regenerative medicine.
Their strategy is to bring these interdisciplinary strengths together, and to leverage their basic research to develop therapies. ISCRM integrates diverse scientific and clinical disciplines.
The Center for Cardiovascular Biology is dedicated to discovering the molecular basis of cardiovascular disease, harnessing this information to develop new therapies, and training the next generation of cardiovascular physicians and scientists.
Dr. Beverly Green is a family physician and associate investigator at Group Health and Group Health Research Institute. Her areas of interest include population based screening within organized health care and safety net settings, improving the care of chronic conditions such as hypertension, and leveraging technology to optimize the reach and effectiveness of evidence-based health care. She is also a Clinical Associate Professor in the University of Washington Medical School Department of Family Medicine.
The Social Development Research Group (SDRG) seeks to investigate and promote healthy behaviors and positive social development in youth and adults.
SDRG is a recognized leader in the field of prevention research. Its efforts to understand how risk and protective factors influence development have resulted in hundreds of articles in peer-reviewed journals and led to the development of tested and effective interventions.
Prof Cox is one of the lead investigators in an International Consortium put together with the aim of identifying the genetic basis of cleft lip/palate. Patients, and particularly families with multiple affected individuals, have been collected from the US, Australia, Netherlands, Colombia and the Philippines.
The project, currently supported by federal funding from Australia, has been conducting exome and whole-genome sequencing. New candidate genes are being assessed in Prof Cox’s laboratory through functional studies involving a combination of in vitro assays and mouse models.
Additional research in the Cox lab is focused on the molecular and developmental mechanisms causing facial clefts, the role of diet in mitigating the severity of presentation, and the role of ‘cleft’ genes in other dental phenotypes commonly seen in patients. We are interested in partnering with other clinicians and basic researchers with interests in clinical outcomes in the management of individuals with clefts or other craniofacial malformations, genetic testing, or basic epithelial biology.
Dr. McKinney received her doctorate in epidemiology from the University of Washington in 2006. Her research interests are focused on craniofacial, oral, and nutritional health in young children. She is based in the Division of Craniofacial Medicine in the Department of Pediatrics at the UW School of Medicine.
Dr. McKinney currently studies the unique intersection of oral clefts, maternal breast milk expression, infant feeding and global health. She spearheaded the development of the NIFTY cup – an infant feeding cup for infants with breastfeeding difficulties such as infants with oral clefts and preterm infants in low resource settings – with a team of multidisciplinary experts from Seattle Childrens, PATH, the University of Washington and Laerdal Global Health. Her global research collaborations involve partners in Thailand, India and Ghana.
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) is an independent global health research center at the University of Washington that provides rigorous and comparable measurement of the world’s most important health problems and evaluates the strategies used to address them.
IHME makes this information freely available so that policymakers have the evidence they need to make informed decisions about how to allocate resources to best improve population health.