OBSSR Upcoming Events

The OBSSR hosts virtual and in-person meetings that highlight behavioral and social sciences research (BSSR). In coordination with the NIH Institutes, Centers, and Offices, other government agencies, and the wider BSSR community, OBSSR facilitates opportunities to network, collaborate, explore, and advance BSSR.

OBSSR hosts a Director’s Webinar Series on a variety of BSSR topics to help communicate BSSR findings and other relevant BSSR information. OBSSR’s annual in-person meetings include the NIH Matilda White Riley Behavioral and Social Sciences Honors and the NIH Behavioral and Social Sciences Research Festival. Subscribe to receive updates on the latest OBSSR and BSSR-related event information.

View the list of past OBSSR events.

May 1, 2024, 2:00 - 3:00pm | Virtual and in person on NIH campus, Lipsett Amphitheater (Building 10)
Presenter: Jenny Tung, Ph.D., Duke University and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

Our experiences in early life and our social connections throughout life strongly predict our health and our lifespans. Work in the last few decades reveals that similar patterns govern the lives of our closest living relatives, the non-human primates. These studies suggest that the social determinants of health in humans have deep evolutionary roots.

During her lecture, Dr. Tung will consider our emerging understanding of this process, drawing on her work on both captive rhesus macaques and wild baboons. She will review the strong evidence that early adversity, social status, and affiliative ties in adulthood are central to life outcomes, suggesting that observations in humans are not an artifact of the modern human environment.

May 20, 2024, 1:00 - 4:30pm | Virtual
Matilda White Riley, Ph.D., (1911–2004) was a celebrated scientist and member of the National Academy of Sciences whose transformative work and leadership left a lasting impact in the behavioral and social sciences across the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and beyond.
May 28, 2024, 1:00 - 5:00pm | Virtual

Several National Institutes of Health (NIH) Institutes, Centers, and Offices are partnering to host a two-day virtual workshop to explore the recommendations from a recent National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report titled, Using Population Descriptors in Genetics and Genomics Research: A New Framework for an Evolving Field.

May 29, 2024, 11:00am - 3:00pm | Virtual

Several National Institutes of Health (NIH) Institutes, Centers, and Offices are partnering to host a two-day virtual workshop to explore the recommendations from a recent National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report titled, Using Population Descriptors in Genetics and Genomics Research: A New Framework for an Evolving Field.

June 6, 2024, 12:00 - 5:00pm | Virtual

This virtual workshop will bring together diverse perspectives from multiple disciplines to explore advantages, barriers, gaps, and opportunities in the future of scientific conferencing for the behavioral and social sciences. Areas of particular focus will include technological innovations that enable virtual and hybrid approaches, and the impact of these approaches on diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and belonging (DEIAB) of participants and attendees as well as environmental sustainability.

Register
https://www.labroots.com/ms/virtual-event/future-scientific-conferencing

Call for Abstracts
https://www.labroots.com/ms/virtual-event/future-scientific-conferencing/abstracts

June 7, 2024, 12:00 - 3:00pm | Virtual

This virtual workshop will bring together diverse perspectives from multiple disciplines to explore advantages, barriers, gaps, and opportunities in the future of scientific conferencing for the behavioral and social sciences. Areas of particular focus will include technological innovations that enable virtual and hybrid approaches, and the impact of these approaches on diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and belonging (DEIAB) of participants and attendees as well as environmental sustainability.

Register
https://www.labroots.com/ms/virtual-event/future-scientific-conferencing

Call for Abstracts
https://www.labroots.com/ms/virtual-event/future-scientific-conferencing/abstracts

June 11, 2024, 12:00 - 5:00pm | Virtual

This virtual workshop will bring together diverse perspectives from multiple disciplines to explore advantages, barriers, gaps, and opportunities in the future of scientific conferencing for the behavioral and social sciences. Areas of particular focus will include technological innovations that enable virtual and hybrid approaches, and the impact of these approaches on diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and belonging (DEIAB) of participants and attendees as well as environmental sustainability.

Register
https://www.labroots.com/ms/virtual-event/future-scientific-conferencing

Call for Abstracts
https://www.labroots.com/ms/virtual-event/future-scientific-conferencing/abstracts

July 23, 2024, 2:00 - 3:00pm | Virtual
Presenter: Rebeca Wong, Ph.D., University of Texas Medical Branch

Presentation topic: The intersection of social science, aging, and health disparities

Dr. Wong is a Mexican scholar who received a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Michigan in 1987. She served in the faculty of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, Georgetown University Department of Demography, and as Associate Director of the University of Maryland Population Research Center. She joined UTMB in 2008 to serve as Director of the WHO/PAHO Collaborating Center on Aging and Health. She is also Vice Chair of Research at SPPH and Associate Director of the UTMB Pepper Center and Sealy Center on Aging.

Dr. Wong's research agenda focuses on the economic consequences of population aging, in particular in Mexico and among immigrant Hispanics in the U.S. She has pioneered the use of cross-national approaches to study health outcomes among international migrants, and has completed recent work on disability and unhealthy lifestyles among elderly in the U.S. and Mexico, socioeconomic gradients of health, poverty and utilization of health services, co-existence of infectious and chronic diseases, and the impact of the social security and health care reform among elderly in Mexico. She serves as Principal Investigator of the Mexican Health and Aging Study (MHAS), financed by the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health. The study seeks to locate research on Mexico's unique health dynamics in broad socioeconomic context, and it includes a national longitudinal survey of multiple purposes among the population of middle and old age. A description of the study and a list of publications related to the MHAS is available at www.MHASweb.org.

September 17, 2024, 2:00 - 3:00pm | Virtual
Presenter: Emily Wang, MD, MAS, Yale University

Presentation topic: Justice involved individuals and access to healthcare

Emily Wang is a professor in the Yale School of Medicine and directs the SEICHE Center for Health and Justice. The SEICHE Center is a collaboration between the Yale School of Medicine and Yale Law School working to stimulate community transformation by identifying the legal, policy, and practice levers that can improve the health of individuals and communities impacted by mass incarceration. She leads the Center's research program, the Health Justice Lab, which receives National Institutes of Health funding to investigate how incarceration influences chronic health conditions, including cardiovascular disease, cancer, and opioid use disorder, and uses a participatory approach to study interventions which mitigate the impacts of incarceration. As an internist, she has cared for thousands of individuals with a history of incarceration and is co-founder of the Transitions Clinic Network, a consortium of 40 community health centers nationwide dedicated to caring for individuals recently released from correctional facilities by employing community health workers with histories of incarceration.

Dr. Wang has served on the National Academy of Sciences/Institute of Medicine’s Health and Incarceration Workshop, Means of Violence Workshop, and the Steering Committee on Improving Collection of Indicators of Criminal Justice System Involvement in Population Health Data Programs. Her work been published in the Lancet, JAMA, American Journal of Public Health, and Health Affairs, and showcased in national outlets such as the New York Times, NPR, and CNN. Dr. Wang has an AB from Harvard University, an MD from Duke University, and a MAS from the University of California, San Francisco.