What attracted you to the health metrics field?
As an undergraduate, I cultivated a passion for global health, a field of study that allowed me to advocate for health as a human right while pursuing my interests in scientific inquiry and social understanding. While in college, I helped implement an HIV/AIDS prevention and awareness campaign in a village in northern Tanzania. This experience introduced me to the complex biological, social, political, and economic factors that determine an individual’s risk of infection. It also highlighted for me the often simple, community-based methods that can help prevent and treat diseases. I returned to Tanzania to explore women’s vulnerability to HIV infection and looked at how microfinance can empower women in the face of this disease. Although I learned about intricate relationships between development and health, I was frustrated that I could not generalize my findings beyond one small community. Health metrics offered me a way to look at diseases and interventions on the macro scale of entire populations.
What work are you doing at IHME?
I am a member of the Effective Intervention Coverage research team. We are measuring the utilization and quality of specific health interventions, such as vaccines, prevention programs, and insecticide-treated bed nets. My current project is to study global trends in the use of different methods of contraception and how these relate to changes in the total fertility rate. Fertility rates are closely correlated with maternal mortality ratios. I also look forward to becoming involved in the initiative to measure inequalities in intervention coverage.
How do you think your experience at IHME will contribute to your future work?
I would like to go to medical school and combine clinical work in an underresourced setting with health policy work. At IHME, I am learning transferrable quantitative skills and meeting leading figures in all areas of global health. Having access to critical statistical information and understanding the methods that produce this information will be invaluable in any decisions I make in the future, whether working as a doctor, as a member of a community health organization, or as a researcher at an international development agency.
