I’m Neal Marquez , a Statistical Demographer focused on studying geographic variation in Hispanic Population processes.

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Selected Publications

The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a heightened toll on people incarcerated in prisons in the United States, with those incarcerated experiencing a higher rate of infection and mortality than the US population more generally. What is less well known is the degree to which COVID-19 outcomes differ among incarcerated populations, especially by race and ethnicity, where significant differences have been found among the US population as a whole. To shed light on this topic, we analyzed mortality patterns of the population incarcerated in Texas state prison facilities during both the year before (beginning April 1, 2019) and the first year of (beginning April 1, 2020) the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 mortality was 1.61 and 2.12 times higher for Black and Hispanic populations, respectively, when compared with the White population in Texas prisons. Strategies for COVID-19 mitigation in carceral settings, such as vaccination and decarceration, should include an equity component to minimize disparities. Read the full article here.

COVID-19 incidence and standardized mortality rates remained consistently higher among the prison population than the overall US population in the first year of the pandemic. While COVID-19 incidence and mortality rates peaked in late 2020 and early 2021 and have since declined, the cumulative toll of COVID-19 has been several times greater among the prison population than the overall US population. Read the full article here.

There is an increasing focus on reducing inequalities in health outcomes in developing countries. Subnational variation is of particular interest, with geographic data used to understand the spatial risk of detrimental outcomes and to identify who is at greatest risk. While some health surveys provide observations with associated geographic coordinates, many others provide data that have their locations masked and instead only report the strata within which the data resides. How to harmonize these data sources for spatial analysis has seen previously considered though no method has been agreed upon and comparison of the validity of methods are lacking. In this paper, we present a new method for analyzing masked survey data alongside traditional geolocated data, using a method that is consistent with the data generating process. Read the full article here.

Experience

 
 
 
 
 

Forecasting Program Manager

Portland State University Population Research Center

June 1, 2022 – Present Portland, Oregon
Research scientist leading a forecasting research project estimating county level population growth for the state of Oregon with a focus urban growth boundary changes and future diversification of the Oregon state population.
 
 
 
 
 

Research Analyst

UCLA COVID-19 Behind Bars Data Project

July 1, 2020 – April 1, 2022 Los Angeles, California
Data Scientist for a research team collecting data on COVID-19 outbreaks and mortality incidents in carceral settings in the United States. Created and managed ETL pipeline and wrote a number of scientific articles describing the public health crisis of COVID-19 among those incarcerated in the United States.
 
 
 
 
 

Research Analyst

Instituto Nacional de Salud Pública

January 15, 2017 – April 1, 2017 Cuernavaca, Morelos
Analyzed spatial inequalities of mortality and morbidity within selected Latin American countries using Bayesian Hierarchical modeling methodologies.
 
 
 
 
 

Research Analyst and Fellow

Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation

August 1, 2014 – September 1, 2019 Seattle, Washington
Working alongside an international team of global health researchers I worked to build flexible statistical tools that I and other researchers could use to estimate varying levels of mortality across the globe.
 
 
 
 
 

Research Technician

National Institute of Child Health and Development

February 1, 2012 – August 1, 2014 Bethesda, Maryland
Primary data collection across the biometric spectrum. NICHD also gave me the independent space to grow into a statistician.

Recent & Upcoming Talks

A brief review of how the US Census Bureau’s implementation of epsilon differential privacy will effect geographic analysis.

Though net migration of Mexican nationals into the United States is near zero, there is a continued geographic redistribution of the population.

An introduction to the US Census’s implementation of differential privacy.

Contact

Connect with me

  • Savery Hall Room 250, University of Washington, Chelan Ln, Seattle, WA 98105
  • Monday 3:00 to 4:30
    Thursday 10:30 to 11:20