Ben Campbell

What attracted you to the health metrics field?

While in college, I conducted an ethnographic research study in rural Tanzania on how women in two villages understood and responded to childhood illnesses. It was fascinating to learn from the women that many children ailed from an illness called degedege, which they described as similar to but distinct from malaria. Many women I interviewed said that if their child had degedege, they would take the child to a traditional healer, but if the child had malaria, it was more appropriate to go to a hospital. This made me question: How do health information systems capture deaths due to illnesses that fall outside the biomedical paradigm? Were child deaths due to degedege even being counted? The research made me realize some of the challenges in creating an accurate picture of population health, and that we must address these challenges with both qualitative and quantitative approaches. Because I focused mostly on the social sciences and qualitative work in college, I felt inspired to join IHME to gain a strong foundation in the quantitative methods used to study global health.

What work are you doing at IHME?

I’m currently working on the Verbal Autopsy research team. Verbal autopsies are interviews conducted with family members of someone who has died to learn about symptoms present before death. This information can be helpful in understanding causes of death, especially in populations where many people die at home and rarely interact with the health care system. It also gives policymakers a better sense of how to prioritize health interventions. We are comparing existing methods used to analyze verbal autopsy data to see how they perform compared to methods we are developing at IHME. The goal is to find the best method to analyze verbal autopsy data and ultimately to make that method accessible to countries as part of their health information systems.

How do you think your experience at IHME will contribute to your future work?

I’m very interested in how research findings can be translated into effective health policy. To better understand this intersection of research and policy, I need to know how to critically analyze and interpret research results, and I’m certain IHME will help me build these important skills. Already, I look at data very differently than I used to. When I read a journal article, I ask: What is the research question? Were the methods appropriate for that question? Where are the data coming from? I think this experience will instill a critical mindset to help me be an effective leader in my chosen field, no matter which path I ultimately take.

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