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Mengru Wang, Post-Bachelor Fellow

Sydney, Australia
BA, Biology, Culture, Health, and Science
Mount Holyoke College

What attracted you to the health metrics field?

It was an experience in my sophomore year working for Unite for Sight. I lived in the north of Ghana for three months and saw some severe health disparities there. They have one ophthalmologist for more than 2 million people, and I could see at the field level how the money that was coming in was being disseminated and where there were gaps. I was supported by a college fellowship to do research while I was there, and I interviewed health administrators at hospitals and talked to people at the Swiss Red Cross. All the work was focused on health development challenges – how do we define them and offer potential solutions?

What work are you doing at IHME?

I’m in the Causes of Death group, working on the global burden of disease study. I have been researching vital registration data in China, looking at trends in health between rural and urban areas and the leading causes of death and disease burdens in different regions and age groups. The Chinese health ministry has a vital registration system that covers about 8% of the population. The country also has something called the Disease Surveillance Points system that covers an additional 1%, and in some ways, this system gathers data that are more representative. At the moment, we don’t feel the two datasets are very comparable because they use different causes of death lists. We are looking for ways to use both of them to present the most comprehensive picture of health in China.

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

I definitely want to work in the public health field. I already have gotten exposure to a number of different organizations through this fellowship. My dream job would be to work with some foreign ministry of health while at an academic institution here in the US. I would like to work with the ministries to find ways to empower them to try new protocols for monitoring and treating their populations in the most effective way.

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