Post-Graduate Fellowship

The Post-Graduate Fellowship (PGF) is an intensive training program that provides opportunities for self-directed research and interdisciplinary collaboration in health metrics. Strong candidates for this program have graduate-level training in quantitative methodology from one of the following areas: health policy, economics, mathematics, computer science, statistics, biostatistics, epidemiology, health services, demography, engineering, physics, medical sciences, or other related fields.

The PGF program combines academic research, education and training, and professional work with progressive, on-the-job training and mentoring from an accomplished group of professors and researchers.

The purpose of the fellowship is to prepare fellows for future positions in academia, national health agencies, international organizations, and foundations:

• Enhance skills in conducting in-depth, methodological research on a variety of global health topics with mentoring from faculty and researchers who are the leading minds in their fields. 
• Advance knowledge of quantitative analytical methodologies and their applications to global health.
• Develop understanding of the current global health landscape and its challenges. 
• Strengthen the ability to design and implement research projects, prepare scientific manuscripts for publication in international journals, and mentor junior researchers. 
• Build skills in federal and foundation grant proposal development and submission.

IHME fellows work to support the Institute’s core research to answer these three critical questions: What are the major health problems? How well is society addressing these problems? How do we best dedicate resources to maximize health improvement? To achieve that end, fellows will work in one or two of the following research areas:

• Measuring Health: To better measure global health, IHME researchers generate systematic estimates of demographics, such as mortality and population, and health outcomes, including mortality, causes of death, risk factors, functional health status, and the burden of disease. As part of this work, researchers are improving verbal autopsy methods to gather more accurate data on mortality and causes of death in low-resource settings.

• Tracking Performance: To track the performance of societies in addressing health challenges, IHME researchers measure effective intervention coverage and conduct impact evaluations of policies and programs and assess health system performance globally, at the country and regional levels, and in smaller areas, such as US counties. IHME also monitors costs and social determinants and analyzes public and private development assistance for health and how that funding affects health spending by developing countries. 

• Maximizing Impact: To maximize the impact of health information, IHME researchers estimate the cost effectiveness of health service delivery platforms and interventions and provide guidance about optimal resource allocation. IHME also identifies health care delivery constraints and analyzes equity and fairness in decision-making.

• Innovative Measurement Systems: To advance the science of health measurement and evaluation, IHME researchers develop survey instruments and create analytical tools to harness the value of data from national and international health information systems and from locally available sources. IHME also works to improve integrated surveillance systems and devise new computational algorithms.