What attracted you to the health metrics field?
In retrospect, my interest began with one of the first classes I took in college, a freshman seminar about understanding the use and misuse of statistics in health care. It wasn’t until I found the application for the PBF program at IHME, though, that I realized that health metrics was not only an actual field but also a great fit for me. I always liked math but didn’t see the point of pursuing a career in math for math’s sake. In the same way, I enjoyed my social science classes but wondered what good these theories served on their own.
As much as I was drawn to earning a medical degree, I knew that I wanted to pursue medicine outside of a clinical setting. I could see that high-level policy changes and large amounts of money did not always translate into improvements in health outcomes at the micro level. It’s clear that in order to have an impact, policy decisions need to be well-informed and rooted in evidence. Health metrics stands somewhere at the intersection of all this: using social science perspectives to inform quantitative analyses that can inform policy and resource distribution. If we can do this right, we can have a big impact on health.
What work are you doing at IHME?
I’m working on the most recent iteration of the Global Burden of Disease project. Our goal is to measure the impact of diseases by the disability-adjusted life year, or DALY, which takes into account the years of life lost due to death, illness, or injury. My work will focus on congenital anomalies, vaccine-preventable diseases, sexually transmitted diseases, injuries, and other conditions. I’ll be taking raw data gathered by our collaborators and producing estimates of incidence and prevalence by region. These estimates will then be used to generate DALYs for those conditions.
How do you think your experience at IHME will contribute to your future work?
I hope to continue working in public health in some capacity, and I find that everything I am learning at IHME is helping advance my knowledge in that field. Between the analytical skills I’m picking up at work, the theories I’m learning in the classroom, the discussions I’m engaging in during meetings, and the people and information I’m exposed to, I see myself being able to offer an informed and critical perspective to whatever work I do next.
