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Casey Olives, Post-Graduate FellowAlbuquerque, NM
PhD, Biostatics; MS, Biostatistics
Harvard School of Public Health BA, Mathematics Most people are moved by personal stories of health struggles – a picture of a blackened lung or a tale of one person's struggle with disease. But for Casey Olives it's the population trends that move him most. "I didn't realize how strong of an impact that would have on me," Casey said. "I looked at these maps and started dealing with the data and was really struck by them. It was surprising – and incredibly inspiring because it gives me some kind of impetus to continue to work on it." Casey has a background in mathematics and was nudged in the direction of biostatistics by a trusted advisor. At Harvard he found biostatistics to be a good fit, so he pursued a PhD. After doing research in developing statistical methods for monitoring health programs in the developing world, he was drawn to IHME for its focus on methods. "It's not always the case that old tools can solve new problems," he said. "You need to actually develop the tools to answer certain questions. IHME has put together a good team to do that." At the moment, Casey's team, National Health Information Systems, is conducting a study of risk factors by county, beginning in Washington state. They are using both a large phone survey conducted by the CDC and a smaller survey that includes a physical examination, with the goal of estimating the prevalence of diagnosed and nondiagnosed risk factors such as hypertension, diabetes and obesity. "We're using the United States as a test environment to hone the methods for small-area estimation," Casey says. "It's a great place to do that because there's lots of information." Ultimately, these methods will be used in the developing world, with the idea of combining all the available data in such a way as to coherently tell the story of various risk factors and health outcomes in those places. Through this project and his work on the Models team, Casey is able to use his math prowess in taking new, advanced quantitative methods and applying them to the real world. "What I was doing before was on a much more micro scale," Casey says. "It's just been a matter of scaling up my perspective." Selected Publications:
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