Matthew Schneider

What attracted you to the health metrics field?

I volunteered for a public health project in Guatemala City working with disabled children in an orphanage and was struck by the huge disparities these developing countries have. It was something I knew I wanted to help change, and I started thinking about how I could work on a much bigger scale. At the same time, I became really interested as an undergrad in quantifying some of these hard-to-quantify problems. One of my professors, John Harte, wrote a book called Consider a Spherical Cow, and the premise was how to come up with accurate hypotheses on things that you are not really sure about. When I saw an application for the IHME program, I thought it sounded amazing. Being able to analyze health data and come up with hard numbers for ephemeral topics was appealing, and having an influence on policies was a big draw.

What work are you doing at IHME?

I started out in Effective Coverage, working on researching the number of children vaccinated for measles between the ages of 9 months and 12 months. Now I am in the Financial Flows group. We are researching a concept known as additionality, meaning the effect that health aid from the outside has on government spending for health. We’re also updating the total amount of money spent on global health for 2008. Some people are skeptical about health aid. They wonder what recipient governments are doing with their budgets after receiving millions of dollars in aid from private donors and other governments. Our team developed 12 different models to apply to 91 countries to try to estimate the effect of aid on health spending. My job has been to tailor an analysis to each country and find a way to take those 12 models and come up with the best summary estimate. It’s been an incredible challenge and an incredible learning experience.

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

I am earning my Master of Public Health at the University of Washington. After that, I want to find a way to gain more experience working in public health internationally, possibly working for one of the UN agencies. I ultimately would like to work in the policy area. What I hope to take from this fellowship is the ability to look at information with a critical eye, find gaps, and then find ways to fill those gaps. We are constantly trying to be innovative here and trying to find answers to problems where others have failed, whether it is how much money is being spent on global health or how many children are being vaccinated. I want to bring that same innovative drive to whatever I do in the future.

Published Works