What attracted you to the health metrics field?
I had a minor in Chinese, and I was particularly interested in how psychological concepts are measured in different cultures. I did a study abroad program in Southwest China, where I studied the language and researched the differences between cultures. I did my senior thesis on the psychological effects of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Because of the contacts I had made in China, when I returned to the US, I was able to reach out to about 100 survivors of the revolution with what I thought were appropriate research questions. One of my findings was that survivors were more likely to have experienced symptoms of depression if they had done anything to reject or disown their parents during the revolution. However, I didn’t feel I had a strong enough background in statistics to do what I wanted to do with my data. I felt there was so much more that I could have done with more training.
What work are you doing at IHME?
I’m in the Effective Coverage group, and I’ve been focusing on birth care in developing countries. We’re trying to analyze the percentage of women every year who either give birth in a facility or with a skilled health worker, such as a midwife or nursing assistant. We are mostly using existing data, but in some cases, we have found new data. For China, I researched and found that there were reproductive health surveys that had been done. We ended up with two books of data. My next focus is prenatal care — whether women had four or more exams or consultations with a physician or nurse before they gave birth and whether those visits had an impact positively or negatively on the outcome.
How do you think your experience at IHME will contribute to your future work?
One of the things I’m also doing, as part of a grant we received from the National Institute on Aging, is to measure the effectiveness of various interventions in Washington state. I’m excited to learn more about our small area estimation methods, which allow us to generate trends that are at the county level or even deeper. I would like to take some of these methods and tools and go back home to Illinois to work in a program that monitors coverage and effectiveness, whether it’s tracking STD rates or chronic disease interventions.
