What attracted you to the health metrics field?
During college, I worked with a non-governmental organization called the Ghana Health and Education Initiative on a malaria project in Ghana's rural western region. I worked with community health care workers from a village of about 1,000 people to conduct surveys that evaluated the effectiveness of bed net interventions. I developed insights into Ghanaian culture and learned how this influences behaviors that affect health. I became interested in what constituted effective surveillance and how potentially misleading responses were accounted for in data analysis. I was also curious about how data of this nature were being used to implement effective and lasting changes. My experience in Ghana cemented my passion for global health and changed the trajectory of my college experience. I participated in a community development program in eastern Nicaragua during my senior year and saw how the lack of basic infrastructure, such as paved roads, added a new level of difficulty to the delivery of health care interventions. I was attracted to IHME’s work because I was excited about the opportunity to investigate problems on a macro level and generate results that influence decisions on the micro level by governments and aid agencies.
What work are you doing at IHME?
I am on the Causes of Death research team, where I am estimating trends in variables that have an impact on health, such as the amount of seafood or vegetable oil we eat. We are producing estimates for all countries around the world. These variables will be used to predict death rates from specific causes. In the future, I plan to work on a new model that estimates different causes of death from the prevalence of recorded deaths in rural and urban hospitals.
How do you think your experience at IHME will contribute to your future work?
I had always wanted to be a doctor to help solve health care inequalities abroad. However, after observing health clinics in Ghana and Nicaragua, I started to believe that short-term medical interventions may not be enough for fundamental, long-term improvements in population health. I hope that by developing my quantitative skillset at IHME, I will be able to better address the root causes of inequalities in global health.
