What attracted you to the health metrics field?
During college, I worked in rural Mbarara, Uganda, assisting outreach nurses in providing prenatal care. I witnessed the tragic impact of health disparities, as numerous women left our resource-limited clinics without being able to buy key antibiotics that cost just pennies. This cemented my growing commitment to global health work, combining my beliefs about social justice and my interest in health. At the same time, I was helping to conduct focus groups, surveys, and in-home interviews with community members to assess their pressing health needs. Through this work and through my public policy studies, I learned the value of evidence-based methods in assisting decision-making. When I looked into the health metrics field, I found it a phenomenal way to apply data to inform policies that can improve global health.
What work are you doing at IHME?
I work on the Health Financing research team. We look into who is giving money to global health, how much is being given, how recipients are using it, and how these funds are affecting health outcomes. Information about these resource flows is in increasingly high demand by policymakers, and our research team is attempting to provide it using the best available data and techniques.
How do you think your experience at IHME will contribute to your future work?
Understanding the pathway from data to results will be invaluable in my future global health work. I have a strong interest in practicing medicine clinically while also contributing to global health, either through health policy or program management. My experience at IHME will allow me to be a more discerning consumer of information and make better evidence-based decisions, which will serve me in all of these aspirations. I am developing research skills that I can apply in any work setting, and I am connecting with like-minded peers also dedicated to global health. I hope to strike a balance between maintaining a large-scale perspective on how to improve global health while working directly with underserved populations.
Published Works
Leach-Kemon K, Chou DP, Schneider MT, Tardif A, Dieleman JL, Brooks BPC, Hanlon M, Murray CJLM. The global financial crisis has led to a slowdown in growth of funding to improve health in many developing countries. Health Affairs. 2012; DOI: 10.1377/hlthaff.2011.1154.
