Carly Levitz

What attracted you to the health metrics field?

I knew going into college that I wanted to study sociology, but I didn't immediately understand the breadth of topics within the discipline. The summer after my freshman year, I was fortunate to be a research assistant at the University of Iowa in the Department of Family Medicine. My research focused on how to improve screening rates for colon cancer, and it was through this research that I discovered how consistent the patterns of health disparities really are.

I decided to study such disparities through classes in the sociology of health and medicine. I then realized that without valid statistics, these disparities could not be measured properly, and without such measurement, many improvements in health couldn't be made. This led me to study statistics.

My junior year, I became a research assistant at the University of Pennsylvania’s Population Studies Center, and my interest shifted toward demography and how I could study what changes the characteristics of a population, such as fertility, death, and migration. In the health metrics field, I found a great intersection of sociology, statistics, and demography.

What work are you doing at IHME?

I'm on the Demographics research team. We are currently working on a book that describes methods to measure mortality, as well as documenting mortality trends for 187 countries from 1950 to the present. Challenges of the book include figuring out how to incorporate mortality shocks from wars or disasters, as well as creating a model that works well in countries with significant amounts of mortality data as well as in countries with a dearth of data.

We also provide the country- and sex-specific mortality estimates for the Global Burden of Disease 2010 Study. The goal of the Demographics team is to create replicable methods for indicators of population so that policymakers and other researchers are able to both understand our process and use results of that process to improve health globally.

It is essential to understand how population measures, such as mortality, vary by region and country in order for policymakers to implement appropriate and effective measures to improve health.

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

IHME will allow me to hone my quantitative and research skills in order to better understand the global health field and the current challenges in measuring health. After IHME, I would like to continue developing new measurement methods in demography and teach them to others.

I hope to also contribute to the study and development of policy on population health issues in order to ensure that the methods created and numbers derived move beyond just reports to have an impact on the health of our world.

Published Works