The Week of June 22nd: IHME
Monday: Monday began with a weekly team meeting, discussing our duties for the week. For the week, I was assigned to look at IHME data (Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation) and complete several analyses over the week. I was assigned the HCV data which includes modeled data for each country in the world. To begin, I had to sift through all the original data and the uploaded data to find the specific years and indicators I was looking for.
These were the assigned questions to explore through the data:
- What are the top 20 countries for prevalence (chronic), mortality (total deaths), mortality rate, and % of liver cancer deaths attributable to liver cancer? We looked at this for mortality already but let’s recreate based on the new data to make sure there are no major changes
- What 5-10 countries have the highest declines from 1990-2019 and 2015-2019?
- From looking at the line graphs on the dashboards, are there any countries with peculiar trends we should look at further? Abrupt declines and increases, blimps in the data etc
Ares VII: 7.6: 7.6.11
Area I: 1.2: 1.2.5; 1.2.6 1.3: 1.3.1; 1.3.6
Tuesday: On Tuesday, the other intern and I exchanged our blog posts that we worked on last week to make any final revisions before sending them to our supervisors to upload to the Task Force Website. My blog focused on a clinic in Bali, Bali Peduli, and the other intern’s blog focused on hepatitis in Atlanta. It was interesting to compare our posts and see how we both went about writing them. I made several changes to made, including adding in quotes from the Bali Peduli interview to supplement the blog post summary about the clinic. I spent the rest of the day sorting through the IHME data as it was incredibly lengthy and incorporated hundreds of countries from across the world.
Ares VII: 7.6: 7.6.11
Area I: 1.2: 1.2.5; 1.2.6 1.3: 1.3.1; 1.3.6
Wednesday: On Wednesday I focused on two of the indicators I was assigned to explore: chronic prevalence and mortality. This meant pulling out the modeled data for 2019 for each listed country and creating my own excel sheet to organize the data to analyze the trends. This modeled data goes back to 1990. We also had a team meeting to check in and discuss our methods for tackling and analyzing this data.
Ares VII: 7.6: 7.6.11
Area I: 1.2: 1.2.5; 1.2.6 1.3: 1.3.1; 1.3.6
Thursday: On Thursday, I continued with the IHME data for HCV and looked at two of the other indicators: morality rate and % of liver deaths attributable to liver cancer. This involved the same process as with the other indicators. Each indicator takes a while to go through because all the data includes years 1990-2019 and we are focused on the current numbers for 2019. We discussed utilizing these data analyzes for conference abstracts in July. We also had our weekly Journal Club meeting with the other intern leading this week and discussing the hepatitis C elimination program in the country of Georgia. Next week will be my turn to lead journal club.
Ares VII: 7.6: 7.6.11
Area I: 1.2: 1.2.5; 1.2.6. 1.3: 1.3.1; 1.3.6
Friday: Friday began with a team meeting (we have team check-ins every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to discuss how our ongoing projects are progressing). I continued to look at the IHME data as well to consider one of the questions that was assigned: What 5-10 countries have the highest declines from 1990-2019 and 2015-2019? Rochelle, the other intern, was extremely helpful in providing advice for looking at these trends as she is analyzing the IHME data for HBV. I also began to do research to lead Journal Club next week. I am planning to focus on HCV elimination in Rwanda as it is a country that has done a lot in elimination, and has been noted as an exemplary country in its approach to elimination in its region. I also continued to compile Elimination Champion nomination responses from the judges so we can make a decision next week on the winners.
Ares VII: 7.6: 7.6.11. 7.4: 7.4.8
Area I: 1.2: 1.2.5; 1.2.6. 1.3: 1.3.1; 1.3.6
The Week of July 1st: IHME
Monday: The beginning of the week was dedicated to IHME data sorting and analysis. The week started with a checkin between team members on Monday. I reached out to the other intern to verify that I am correctly estimating % differences for the HCV data.
Area I: 1.2: 1.2.5; 1.2.6. 1.3: 1.3.1; 1.3.6
Tuesday: I spent Tuesday filling out the % of deaths attributable to liver cancer for each country. This IHME data was modeled for 2019 for each country. It is interesting seeing the trends for each country across 1999 to 2019.
Area I: 1.2: 1.2.5; 1.2.6. 1.3: 1.3.1; 1.3.6
Wednesday: On Wednesday we had a team meeting to go over the elimination champion judge responses. There were 4 judges, each assigned to nominees 1-8 or 9-16 with an even split for each judge. The judges represent different organizations and regions, along with the nominees that come from countries or regions across the world. We decided to pick 6 winners, considering the number of females that are included and which regions are represented.
Area I: 1.2: 1.2.5; 1.2.6. 1.3: 1.3.1; 1.3.6
Ares VII: 7.6: 7.6.11. 7.4: 7.4.8
Thursday: Thursday began with a team check-in to decide when we wanted to go over the IHME data trends as a team. Thursday also involved journal club, which was led by me. For journal club this week I chose to talk about Rwanda’s HCV program. Rwanda has made significant progress in HCV elimination, especially for the sub-saharan region of the world. We went over financing, workforce, statistics, and other associated factors. I picked three articles to go over. I enjoy journal club as it is a good way to supplement what we are doing by learning about hepatitis around the world.
Ares VII: 7.6: 7.6.11 7.4: 7.4.8
Friday: Friday most of the team took off but I spent a couple hours working on my IHME data. I finished the % difference from 1999 to 2019 for each country prevalence.
Area I: 1.2: 1.2.5; 1.2.6. 1.3: 1.3.1; 1.3.6