For the first time since the launch of the Consortium on Analytics for Data-Driven Decision-Making training program, Fellows and staff were able to gather in person for the 2022 CAnD3 Keynote Address.
With coffee in hand, Fellows from CAnD3 partner institutions across Canada and around the world gathered in the early morning on June 8, 2022 at McGill University's Faculty Club. Warm handshakes and conversations quickly sprung as many Fellows met each other for the first time after a year of online training together.
The Keynote Address began with remarks from CAnD3 Director, Dr. Amélie Quesnel-Vallée, who spoke about the enormous contribution of CAnD3 partners in in-kind time in designing and delivering the program, in creating internship opportunities for Fellows, and in supporting the program through matching funding.
Following an overview of the past two years of training, Dr. Miles Taylor, who is the Chair of the Substantive Committee at CAnD3 and Director of the Pepper Institute on Aging and Public Policy, introduced Dr. Robert A. Hummer as the Keynote Speaker for this year. Dr. Hummer is the Past-President of the Population Association of America and Howard W. Odum Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Joining online due to circumstances related to COVID-19, Dr. Hummer spoke on Race/Ethnicity, Racism, and Population Health and Aging. He made the case that the population sciences community has a critical role to play in incorporating discussions of racism to address population health disparities, especially given the context of aging societies.
"Health disparity statistics are not simply numbers. Those numbers represent lost lives and human suffering for sizable groups of people, and there is profound injustice in such disparities that should demand our attention," Dr. Hummer stressed.
After speaking in detail about Add Health, a national longitudinal study of adolescent to adult health in the United States, Dr. Hummer concluded with the point that, "conceptualizing and measuring racism and modeling its impact on population and health aging will help us understand our societal DNA". That is, it would create a window into understanding systemic racism to design better public policies, develop more effective health interventions, and reduce/eliminate health disparities, however challenging the task.
Dr. Hummer's Address was followed by a Q&A period, lunch, and a poster session hosted by some of the CAnD3 Fellows. One of the presenting Fellows, Sofia Gil-Claver, later tweeted: "Happy to present my poster onsite for the first time!! So amazed [at] how many good questions I got and what a nice conversation I had with everyone!"
The day wrapped up with more opportunities for the Fellows to get to know each other better. The CAnD3 Team would like to sincerely thank Dr. Robert A. Hummer, the Fellows, all in-person and online participants, and the staff at the Faculty Club for making our first hybrid event a success. We look forward to seeing you again at future gatherings.
About the training program
The Population Analytics in an Aging Society Training Program is a rigorous one-year fellowship that upskills rising researchers in Master's, PhD, and postdoctoral programs in the areas of population data science and computational population social science from a multidisciplinary lens. Since the first year of the program in 2020, CAnD3 has trained 32 Fellows from its partner institutions. In the 2022-23 Training Year, CAnD3 is welcoming a diverse cohort of 19 new Fellows representing 14 institutions and more than eight different disciplines.
Learn more and meet the third cohort of CAnD3 Fellows here.
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