Next up!

After three years, I'm done with grad school! I finished my MSPH (Global Disease Epidemiology and Control focus) at Hopkins in late May, and my MPA (Economics and Public Policy focus) at Princeton in early June. It's been a lot of work: 10 months of internships, 3 comprehensive qualifying exams, and a Masters thesis; plus 4 quarters of Hopkins classwork and 3 semesters of Princeton classwork for a total of 33 graduate classes. I loved being in school again -- not all my classmates did -- but I'm also happy to have wrapped things up. One consequence of studying applied subjects like public health and public policy is that you're rarely delving into a subject just for kicks (at least for long); the goal is always to get out and do good work with the knowledge and skills you've acquired. This week I started a job I'm really excited about: working with the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI)'s Applied Analytics Team. If you're curious about CHAI here's their about page, and this profile of Elizabeth McCarthy tells a bit more about the Applied Analytics Team (which she runs). We're also hiring. As with my previous internships and work, I won't be writing directly about what I'm doing much at all, but I'll still be writing more broadly about global health and development policy. (And this is probably a good time to reiterate that the views here are just my own.) I'll be working on projects throughout sub-Saharan Africa -- I'm headed to Nigeria for a couple months on Saturday! More on that soon.

Now, back to my (ir)regular blogging...

Ethiopia bleg

Bleg: n. An entry in a blog requesting information or contributions. (via Wiktionary)

Finals are over, and I just have a few things to finish up before moving to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on June 1. I'll be there for almost eight months, working as a monitoring and evaluation intern on a large health project; this work will fulfill internship requirements for my MPA and MSPH degrees, and then I'll have just one semester left at Princeton before graduating. After two years of "book-learning" I'm quite excited to apply what I've been learning a bit.

One thing I learned from doing (too many?) short stints abroad is that it's easy to show up with good intentions and get in the way; I'm hopeful that eight months is long enough that I can be a net benefit to the team I'll be working with, rather than a drain as I get up to speed. I plan to get an Amharic tutor after I arrive -- unfortunately I figured out my internship recently enough that I wasn't able to plan ahead and study the language before going.

I'm especially excited to live in Ethiopia. I have not been before -- this will be my first visit to East Africa / the Horn of Africa at all. I'll mostly be in Addis, but should also spend some time in rural areas where the project is being implemented. I've already talked with several friends who briefly lived in Addis to get tips on what to read, what to do, who to meet, and what to pack. That said I'm always open for more suggestions.

So, I'll share what I've already, or definitely plan to read, and let you help fill in the gaps. Do you have book recommendations? Web or blog links? RSS suggestions? What-to-eat (or not eat) tips? Here's what I've dug up so far:

  • Owen Barder has several informative pages on living and working in Ethiopia here.
  • Chris Blattman's post on What to Read About Ethiopia has lots of tips, some of which I draw on below. His advice for working in a developing country is also helpful, along with lists of what to pack (parts one and two), though they're obviously not tailored to life in Addis. Blattman also links to Stefan Dercon's page with extensive readings on Ethiopian agriculture, and helpfully organizes relevant posts under tags, including posts tagged Ethiopia.
  • As for a general history, I've started Harold Marcus' academic History of Ethiopia, and it's good so far.
  • Books that have gotten multiple recommendations from friends -- and thus got bumped to the top of my list -- include The Emperor, Cutting for Stone, Chains of Heaven, and The Sign and the Seal. Other books I've seen mentioned here and there include Sweetness in the Belly, Waugh in Abyssinia, Notes from the Hyena's Belly, Scoop, and A Year in the Death of Africa. If you rave about one of these enough it might move higher up the priority list. But I'm sure there are others worth reading too.
  • For regular information flow I have a Google Alert for Ethiopia, the RSS feed for AllAfrica.com's Ethiopia page, and two blogs found so far:  Addis Journal and Expat in Addis. (Blog recommendations welcome, especially more by Ethiopians.) There's also a Google group called Addis Diplo List.
  • One of my favorite novels is The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears -- the story of an Ethiopian immigrant in Washington, DC's Logan Circle neighborhood in the 1980s. It's as much about gentrification as it is about the immigrant experience, and I first read it as a new arrival in DC's Petworth neighborhood -- which is in some ways at a similar 'stage' of gentrification to Logan Circle in the 80s.
  • I've started How to Work in Someone Else's Country, which is aimed more at short-term consultants but has been helpful so far.
  • Also not specific to Ethiopia, but I'm finally getting around to reading the much-recommended Anti-Politics Machine, on the development industry in Lesotho, and it seems relevant.

Let me know what I've missed in the comments. And happy 200th blog post to me.

(Note: links to books are Amazon Affiliates links, which means I get a tiny cut of the sales value if you buy something after clicking a link.)

What happened?

What happened during the 2007-8 financial crisis? Here's a reading from my classes that I think may be of interest to a broader audience: "Getting up to Speed on the Financial Crisis: A One-Weekend-Reader's Guide" by Gary B. Gorton and Andrew Metrick, writing in January 2012 (PDF from NBER). Covering 16 sources (academic papers, a few reports by institutions, and Congressional testimony by Bernanke) Gorton and Metrick provide a timeline of the crisis, some historical perspective on past banking crises, the build-up to this crisis, phases of the crisis itself, and government responses.

It's just 34 pages and interesting throughout -- the only shortcoming is that the PDF is rendered in Calibri.

A related article is Andrew Lo's "Reading About the Financial Crisis: A 21-Book Review" (PDF), which includes this:

No single narrative emerges from this broad and often contradictory collection of interpretations, but the sheer variety of conclusions is informative, and underscores the desperate need for the economics profession to establish a single set of facts from which more accurate inferences and narratives can be constructed.

Discussions of causes are difficult when you don't agree on the simpler matters of what actually happened -- which speaks to the importance of trying to simply get at (as Gorton and Metrick are trying to do) an account of what happened.

Fluoride in New Jersey

I saw this poster at a bus stop on campus a couple weeks ago:

If you can't read it, the title reads: "Stop the New Jersey Public Water Supply Fluoridation Act" and it goes on to say "Fluoride is a toxic chemical even in the smallest doses and when pumped into our water supply it is impossible to control the level of consumption." (emphasis added)

I took a picture but didn't think about it again until I saw this article on Friday: "In New Jersey, a Battle Over a Fluoridation Bill, and the Facts" (NYT) by Kate Zernike. I appreciate that she calls the fearmongering what it is -- a conspiracy theory:

While 72 percent of Americans get their water from public systems that add fluoride, just 14 percent of New Jersey residents do, placing the state next to last... A bill in the Legislature would change that, requiring all public water systems in New Jersey to add fluoride to the supply. But while the proposal has won support from a host of medical groups, it has proved unusually politically charged.

Similar bills have failed in the state since 2005, under pressure from the public utilities lobby and municipalities that argue that fluoridation costs too much, environmentalists who say it pollutes the water supply, and antifluoride activists who argue that it causes cancer, lowers I.Q. and amounts to government-forced medicine.

Public health officials argue that the evidence does not support any of those arguments — and to the contrary, that fluoridating the water is the single best weapon in fighting tooth decay, the most prevalent disease among children.

But they also say they are fighting a proliferation of misleading information. While conspiracy theories about fluoride in public water supplies have circulated since the early days of the John Birch Society, they now thrive online, where anyone, with a little help from Google, can suddenly become a medical authority.

The whole article is worth a read. I think it's a pretty good journalistic take on a charged issue that is a political controversy but not a scientific one. It gives some context as to why people are against it -- a few misleading studies amplified by word of mouth and the Internet -- but also emphasizes which side the evidence base (overwhelmingly) backs up.

Further, there are some echoes here of the anti-vaccine movement,  in that a move to reduce the threshold of acceptable fluoride levels  by HHS was taken to be an acknowledgment that the worst fears of the fluoridation foes were vindicated. That parallels how any mention of efforts to improve vaccine safety (a good thing) is misshapen by antivaccine activists into an acknowledgment that their theories have been vindicated. In short, I'm looking forward to Seth Mnookin's take on all this.

Princeton epidemiology: norovirus edition

Princeton is in the midst of an outbreak of norovirus! What's norovirus, you ask? Well, it looks like this:

Not helpful? Here's the CDC fact sheet:

Noroviruses (genus Norovirus, family Caliciviridae) are a group of related, single-stranded RNA, non-enveloped viruses that cause acute gastroenteritis in humans. The most common symptoms of acute gastroenteritis are diarrhea, vomiting, and stomach pain. Norovirus is the official genus name for the group of viruses previously described as “Norwalk-like viruses” (NLV).

Noroviruses spread from person to person, through contaminated food or water, and by touching contaminated surfaces. Norovirus is recognized as the leading cause of foodborne-disease outbreaks in the United States. Outbreaks can happen to people of all ages and in a variety of settings. Read more about it using the following links.

My shorter translation: "Got an epidemic of nasty stomach problems in an institutional setting (like a nursing home or university)? It's probably norovirus. Wash your hands a lot."

The all-campus email I received earlier today is included below. Think of this as a real-time, less-sexy version of the CDC's MMWR. Emphasis added:

To: Princeton University community

Date: Feb. 6, 2012

From: University Health Services and Environmental Health and Safety

Re: Update: Campus Hygiene Advisory

In light of continuing cases of gastroenteritis on campus, University Health Services and the Office of Environmental Health and Safety want to remind faculty, staff and students about increased attentiveness to personal hygienic practices.

A few of the recent cases have tested positive for norovirus, which is a common virus that causes gastroenteritis.  While it is usually not serious and most people recover in a few days, gastroenteritis can cause periods of severe sickness and can be highly contagious. You can prevent the spread of illness by practicing good hygiene, such as frequent hand washing, and limiting contact with others if sick.

Gastroenteritis includes symptoms of diarrhea, vomiting and abdominal cramps. Please take the following steps if you are experiencing symptoms:

--Ill students should refrain from close contact with others and contact University Health Services at 609-258-3129 or visit McCosh Health Center on Washington Road. Ill employees are encouraged to stay home and contact their personal physicians for medical assistance.

--Wash your hands frequently and carefully with soap and warm water, and always after using the bathroom.

--Refrain from close contact with others until symptoms have subsided, or as advised by medical staff.

--Do not handle or prepare food for others while experiencing symptoms and for two-to-three days after symptoms subside.

--Increase your intake of fluids, such as tea, water, sports drinks and soup broth, to prevent dehydration.

--Avoid sharing towels, beverage bottles, food, and eating utensils and containers.

--Clean and disinfect soiled surfaces with bleach-based cleaning products. Students and others on campus who need assistance with cleaning and disinfecting soiled surfaces may call Building Services at 609-258-8000. Building Services also will be increasing disinfection of frequent touch points, such as doorknobs and restroom fixtures.

--Clean all soiled clothes and linen. Soiled linen should be washed and dried in the hottest temperature recommended by the linen manufacturer.

In the past week, University Health Services has seen more than the usual number of students experiencing symptoms of acute gastroenteritis. The New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services tested samples from a few of the cases, which were later found positive for norovirus. Because norovirus has been identified as the chief cause of gastroenteritis currently on campus, further testing is not planned at this time, but the University is urging community members to take steps to prevent the further spread of illness.

Noroviruses are the most common causes of gastroenteritis in the United States, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Anyone can become infected with gastroenteritis and presence of the illness may sometimes increase during winter months. While most people get better in a few days, gastroenteritis can be serious in young children, the elderly and people with other health conditions. Frequent hand washing with soap and warm water is your best defense against most communicable disease.

I bolded a few passages because I think the very last sentence (wash your hands) is actually the most important single part of the message and is much clearer than encouraging someone to increase "attentiveness to personal hygienic practices." But still a good message overall. At least one friend has come down with this and it sounds unpleasant...

Halfway!

I've been remiss in blogging lately, but my excuses are excellent for once. Princeton has an odd academic schedule with finals after the winter / Christmas holidays. So after spending a couple weeks in Arkansas visiting family it was back to cold (but not as cold as usual) New Jersey to study for finals, write papers, and take exams, all in the middle of January. For normal students -- i.e., those who are used to finishing final exams before Christmas and actually having a mental break over the holidays -- this schedule is unpleasant. But it has one upside: last week was intersession, a one-week break where the fall semester is completely done and the spring semester and its obligations have yet to begin, and Woodrow Wilson students (in the vernacular, "Woos") traditionally plan group vacations.

One group went to Colombia for the week, another to the Dominican Republic, and various individuals and small groups jaunted off to exotic locales like Paris and Florida. I opted for the low-cost, low-energy Puerto Rico group. Sixteen of us rented a condo and this house (which I highly recommended) in Luquillo Beach and enjoyed this for a week:

Needless to say the stress of finals was washed away and we Woos are both more tanned and less loathe to start the spring semester. Today was our first day of classes so I'm still figuring out which classes I'll be taking, but this seems like a good moment to pause and celebrate:

I'm officially halfway through grad school! 1.5 years down, 1.5 to go. So far I've done:

  • 4 quarters of coursework at Hopkins (9 months)
  • a summer interning with the NYC Dept of Health (3 months)
  • and the fall semester at Princeton (6 months)

Still to go:

  • this spring semester at Princeton (4 months)
  • June through January: a yet-to-be-determined internship abroad to fulfill internship requirements for Princeton and practicum and remaining degree requirements for Hopkins (8 months)
  • and a final semester at Princeton in the spring of 2013 (4 months)

I'm happy with my course of study so far, and have largely concentrated on the comparative advantage of each school and program: epidemiology, infectious disease, and other public health courses at Hopkins and economics and more general public policy courses at Princeton. For more details on the two programs (for instance, if you're considering programs like these) click below the fold...

I don't typically blog much about my classes because a) it is difficult and awkward to comment on a class in progress, and b) you might be quite bored since one of several reasons formal education exists is to force students to learn subjects more systematically and in-depth then we might otherwise care to pursue in the course of regular pleasure reading. So I avoid writing about the minutiae of classes -- but am happy to talk if you're considering either of the programs I'm in. One major difference I've mentioned before is that Hopkins is on the quarter system (four terms between August and May) whereas Princeton does semesters (two terms between August and May).

Now that I've finished a semester at Princeton I can say that by comparison the quarter classes aren't exactly a whole semester's worth of material crammed into half the time, but they're definitely more than half. I'd say on average (a very rough approximation!) I learned about two-thirds as much material in a quarter-length class as in a semester one.

As for what classes I've taken, I think they're fairly illustrative of the focus of both programs. As my interests continue to solidify around the implementation and evaluation of large-ish health programs, I think I'll end up using a lot of tools and knowledge from both programs. My course load has also been fairly typical for both programs:

Hopkins MSPH (Global Disease Epidemiology and Control)

I took 16 quarter-length classes for credit, five seminars for credit, and was a teaching assistant in one course:

  • Biostatistics (4 terms)
  • Large-scale Effectiveness Evaluations of Health Interventions
  • Design and Conduct of Community Trials
  • Global Disease Control Programs and Policies
  • Vaccine Policy Issues
  • Vaccine Development and Application
  • Epidemiologic Methods (2 terms)
  • Professional Epidemiology Methods
  • Epidemiology and Public Health Impact of HIV/AIDS
  • Infection, Immunity and Undernutrition (as a teaching assistant)
  • Introduction to International Health
  • Environmental and Population Health in Emergencies
  • Health Behavior Change at the Individual, Household and Community Levels
  • along with one term of a vaccine seminar and four terms of a seminar for my track

Princeton Woodrow Wilson School MPA (Economics and Public Policy track):

Students typically take 4-5 classes per semester, but as a dual degree student I'll do three semesters instead of four. Classes I've completed or must take because they're required:

  • Microeconomics*
  • Macroeconomics*
  • Econometrics*
  • Generalized Linear Statistical Models**
  • Politics of Public Policy
  • Psychology of Public Policy
  • Comparative Political Economy of Development

Others I might take this spring or next spring (my final semester) to complete requirements:

  • Health and Inequality in the World
  • Financial Management
  • Economic Analysis of Development
  • Microeconomic Analysis of Government Activity
  • International Trade
  • and so forth...

Footnotes: * - these core courses, along with a first-semester stats course, are offered at varying levels for students with different math backgrounds ** - most students take an introductory statistics/quantitative course followed by econometrics, while some students opt in to the linear models course instead.

Overhead at WWS

Last week a classmate of mine at the Woodrow Wilson School shared this story, which I in turn share with permission.

Today G and I were doing our impossible econ problem set in Schultz Café. It was about consumer surplus so there were some nice geometric properties, and it was fun finding the areas of the triangles and trapezoids. I said out loud, "I don't how to do it the econ way, G. I only know how to do it the 9th-grade-math way."

Guess who was sitting right behind us?

Christopher Sims.

For background, search this article for the paragraph on Sims and the SAT. Maybe this is why economics folks might think we public policy students aren't so great at math? Related: how to fight impostor syndrome.

Generalized linear models resource

The lectures are over, the problem sets are submitted -- all that's left for the fall semester are finals in a couple weeks. One of the courses I'm taking is Germán Rodríguez's "Generalized Linear Statistical Models" and it occurred to me that I should highlight the course website for blog readers. Princeton does not have a school of public health (nor a medical school, business school, or law school, amongst other things) but it does have a program in demography and population research, and Professor Rodríguez teaches in that program.

The course website includes Stata logs, exams, datasets, and problem sets based on those data sets. The lectures have closely followed the lecture notes on the website, covering the following models: linear models (continuous data), logit models (binary data), Poisson models (count data), overdispersed count data, log-linear models (contingency tables), multinomial responses, survival analysis, and panel data, along with some appendices on likelihood and GLM theory. Enjoy.

Testing treatments in policy

The students at the Woodrow Wilson School have a group blog on public policy called 14 Points. I've been helping promote the blog for a while but just got around to writing my first submission this week. It's titled "Testing Treatments: Building a culture of evidence in public policy". Here's an excerpt:

Similar lessons can be gleaned from the history of surgical response to breast cancer. In The Emperor of All Maladies (2010), a new history of cancer, oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee chronicles the history of such failed interventions as the radical mastectomy. Over a period of decades this brutal procedure – removing the breasts, lymph nodes, and much of the chest muscles – became the tool of choice for surgeons treating breast cancer. In the 1970s rigorous trials comparing radical mastectomy to more limited procedures showed that this terribly disfiguring procedure did not in fact help patients live longer at all. Some surgeons refused to believe the evidence – to believe it would have required them to acknowledge the harm they had done. But eventually the radical mastectomy fell from favor; today it is quite rare. Many similar stories are included in a free e-book titled Testing Treatments (2011).

As a society we’ve come to accept that medical devices should be tested by the most rigorous and neutral means possible, because the stakes are life and death for all of us. Thousands of people faced with deadly illnesses volunteer for clinical trials every year. Some of them survive while others do not, but as a society we are better off when we know what actually works. For every downside, like the delay of a promising treatment until evidence is gathered properly, there is an upside – something we otherwise would have thought is a good idea is revealed not to be helpful at all.

Under normal circumstances most new drugs are weeded out as they face a gauntlet of tests for safety and efficacy required before FDA licensure. The stories of the humanitarian-exemption stent and the radical mastectomy are different because these procedures became more widely used before there was rigorous evidence that they helped, though in both cases there were plenty of anecdotes, case studies, and small or non-controlled studies that made it look like they did. This haphazard, post-hoc testing is analogous to how policy in many other fields, from welfare to education, is developed. Many public policy decisions have considerable impacts on our livelihoods, education, and health. Why are we not similarly outraged by poor standards of evidence that leads to poor outcomes in other fields?

Read the rest at 14 Points, and check out the posts by my classmates.

About grad school

Mr. Epidemiology, a PhD student who blogs at mrepid.wordpress.com, has put together a great round-table where he asks open-ended questions about grad school and collects answers from a variety of Masters and PhD students from across mostly related fields. A little about the roundtable and its respondents is here. Questions covered so far include:

I thought the piece on impostor syndrome was particularly helpful. Although not exactly the impostor syndrome (which also hits me often), this is somewhat related: While blogging and going to school concurrently I've had difficulty writing about certain subjects that I've studied more intensively. The more I study, the more I realize my lack of expertise and hesitate to say anything definitive without endless qualifiers and references. For instance, I TA'ed a class on on malnutrition, infection, and immunity, and spent a summer researching lead poisoning in New York City -- but those are two of the more difficult subjects for me to write about for a popular audience. I know PhD students and true scholars must feel this more intensely, but at the same time it's probably even more important for those with more time invested in a subject to weigh in on it.

Update: the latest addition to the series is What has surprised you the most so far?

Math Camp!

Two weeks ago I wrapped up my work as an Epi Scholar with the NYC Department of Health, where I was researching childhood lead poisoning (on which I should be writing more soon). I had a few days off to enjoy the city, and then last weekend I moved to Princeton, NJ. I'm in Princeton to work on an Master in Public Affairs in 'Economics and Public Policy' at the Woodrow Wilson School. The other Woo students (as the school and its denizens are called) and I moved to Princeton three weeks before our "real" classes begin to enjoy a Woo ritual known as Math Camp. We spend a good chunk of each day in classes that teach or review basic concepts in mathematics and economics. There are four math tracks; the one I'm in has already covered some advanced algebra, univariate and multivariate calculus, and some basic linear algebra. We'll spend the next two weeks doing more calculus and focusing on optimization problems, and touch briefly on some concepts in probability. The Math Camp classes have homework and tests and grades, but their main purpose is to help place us in the most appropriate 'track' in our microeconomics, macroeconomics, and quantititative analysis coursework.

I'm sure I'll end up writing more about Math Camp and the Woo in general, as well as my amazing classmates. I am looking forward to being able to make some comparisons as time goes by -- looking at epidemiology and economics, large schools and small schools, public health and public policy, and so forth. But generally I'll try and keep my writing here about the subject matter I encounter rather than the mechanics of how grad school works.

Grad school advice from bloggers

If you want to take advice from bloggers, they're generally happy to give it. I've written a bit about my own motivation in selecting programs. I think the best advice comes from people who know you, your interests, and aspirations well. That means family and friends, especially if your friends work in similar fields. It's also invaluable to talk to both experienced mentor figures who have some perspective and recent graduates of the programs you're interested in (programs do change over time). Over the past year I've come across a number of resources written by bloggers that I think are worth highlighting: Dave Algoso, a recent graduate of the MPA program at NYU's Wagner School, wrote a grad student’s guide to the international development blogosphere which answers these questions:

1. Why should I read blogs? I do plenty of reading for class/work already… 2. Blogs can be overwhelming. How do I manage the information flow? 3. Okay, I’m sold. What should I be reading?

From Chris Blattman (everyone's favorite development blogger at Yale):

Dani Rodrik responds to Blattman on graduate programs in development.

From Greg Mankiw's blog:

Let me know if you think of something I'm missing. There does seem to be more advice out there about economics programs than those in public health. Personally I'd love to see a similar set of posts from Karen Grepin, Alanna Shaikh, and Elizabeth Pisani, amongst others.

Update: Dave Algoso suggested these posts by Amanda Taub of Wronging Rights, which I missed since I never seriously considered law school:

A few updates

Hopkins: In May I finished final exams for my 4th quarter at Johns Hopkins. That means I'm done with the required four quarters (one year) of coursework towards the MSPH in International Health "Global Disease Epidemiology and Control" (GDEC) track. Looking back I realize that I've learned an incredible amount this year. At some point I hope to write a bit more about the Hopkins experience and major themes in our GDEC coursework, especially for the prospective students who I see end up here through Google searches. The quarter system has pros and cons: it moves fast, which can burn students out by the third or fourth term, but you're also able to shovel a huge dose of knowledge into your brain in a short period of time, leaving the second year of the Masters program more open-ended in comparison to other programs. One reason I chose the MSPH at Hopkins is that flexibility in the second year: you can return and take additional classes after your practicum, or you can spend the entire second year working abroad gaining additional field experience. That flexibility is nice, especially since I'm hoping to work abroad after completing my graduate education and most of my experience in the developing world has been for short periods of time.

In early June I took the comprehensive exams for the MSPH (and hopefully passed!). That means the only requirements I have remaining are a practicum -- 4+ months doing work in international health using the skills I've acquired -- and a Masters paper/thesis based on that practicum. My original plan was to move abroad for a year-long practicum in September, possibly in Nepal, and be done with the MSPH in May of 2012, but that's changed a bit.

New York: This summer I'm part of the New York City Department of Health's Epi Scholars program. Epi Scholars is a training program that pairs graduate students in epidemiology with researcher mentors in the Department of Health. It's been great so far and I plan to write more about the Department, the training experience, and my particular project -- an in-depth review and analysis of severe lead poisoning cases in New York City in the last 5-10 years. The Epi Scholars program is in its fifth year and has its largest class to date (11 participants this year) so it's been great getting to know the other students as well.

Princeton: This fall I'll be starting work on a Masters of Public Affairs (MPA) at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School. I'll be doing the Field IV (Economics and Public Policy) concentration at WWS to get their most rigorous training in economics, but I imagine I'll take a number of courses from the Field III (Development Studies) concentration as well. While Hopkins and Princeton don't have an official joint degree program, I've been able to make arrangements to complete both Masters degrees in a total of three years. The right people at both schools have been incredibly supportive of this idea and have helped me work out the details. My timeline will be something like this:

  • August 2010 - May 2011 - coursework at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, MD done!
  • June - August 2011 - summer internship (NYC Dept of Health Epi Scholars Program) in New York, NY (in progress)
  • August 2011 - May 2012 - coursework at the Woodrow Wilson School in Princeton, NJ
  • June - December 2012 - practicum work abroad (including writing my Masters thesis for Hopkins), location TBA
  • January - May 2013 - back at Princeton for a final semester

The Woodrow Wilson School also gives students the option of taking a "middle year out" if their summer internship is going well or leads naturally to a full-time job. If I went that route I might not finish the MPA until May 2014, but I'd have significantly more work experience when I finally get back on the job market.

I decided to pursue the dual degree as I realized more and more that my interests -- and the work I want to be prepared to do -- lie at the intersection of global health and economics. I'm interested in the traditional 'applied epidemiology' of studying public health interventions, as well as how those methods are increasingly being used to evaluate development interventions outside of health programs. (Aside: fascinatingly, a recurring critique this year of the development economists conducting RCTs from my public health professors has been that they are much, much too concerned with randomization.) I'm interested in cost-effectiveness evaluations of health and other interventions, and how politics and evidence from various disciplines -- from epidemiology to economics -- get used and misused to make health and development policy.

I'll wrap up the Epi Scholars program here in New York in August in order to move to Princeton by August 20 to start "Math Camp" -- a three week crash course in math and economics to get us all up to speed before real classes start. I've already started to meet some of my incoming WWS classmates as they pass through NYC and I think it will be an amazing experience.