Careers

Description:

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) is an independent research center at the University of Washington. Its mission is to deliver to the world timely, relevant, and scientifically valid evidence to improve health policy and practice. IHME carries out its mission through a range of projects within different research areas including the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors; Future Health Scenarios; Costs and Cost Effectiveness; Resource Tracking; and Impact Evaluations. Our vision is to provide policymakers, donors, and researchers with the highest-quality quantitative evidence base so all people live long lives in full health.

IHME is committed to providing the evidence base necessary to help solve the world’s most important health problems. This requires creativity and innovation, which is cultivated by an inclusive, diverse, and equitable environment that respects and appreciates differences, embraces collaboration, and invites the voices of all IHME team members.

IHME has an excellent opportunity for a Data Extraction Analyst to join the Costs and Cost-Effectiveness team. The team analyzes the cost-effectiveness of interventions and health spending by leveraging IHME’s experience, analytical framework, and databases on cost-effectiveness, health financing, and burden of disease estimation and forecasts. To support universal health coverage, IHME will generate incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs) for a broad set of interventions at national and local levels by extending and improving our meta-regression analysis of published estimates. ICERs are a metric for comparing health interventions, and represent the difference in cost between two possible interventions, divided by the difference in their effect. The initial meta-regression analysis was based on published ICERs that were extracted into the Tufts University Cost-Effectiveness Analysis (CEA) and Global Health CEA registries. The Data Extraction Analyst will extract additional ICERs and variables to improve our meta-regression analysis with the support of IHME’s extensive data extraction tools and experienced data professionals.

The main purpose of this position is to provide highly specialized oversight and guidance of routine but complex extraction processes for input data used in modeling, papers, and presentations at IHME. The Data Extraction Analyst will provide support to key research projects through data extraction and formatting, and providing inputs for papers and presentations.

The Data Extraction Analyst is expected to become specialized in data pertaining to relevant content areas and will consult with staff as needed. To create the array of indicators required, this position provides guidance on the extraction of all available relevant quantitative data from surveys, censuses, literature, and administrative records into central databases. This position will collate, clean, and extract data from survey, literature, vital registration, and other sources that have been identified. By doing so, they will catalog a library of data that will add to the foundation of the Institute. Relevant data include those on mortality, causes of death, epidemiology, and a range of determinants and risk factors, such as education, income, or air pollution.

The position must have a strong command of a variety of research needs and analytic functions. The Data Extraction Analyst must be able to anticipate the needs of research teams, as well as other functional teams including the Global Engagement Team, Technology Team, and Research Management as it pertains to the work of data extraction. This position will work with dynamic teams of researchers and staff at all levels and will work alongside other research staff on complementary projects requiring a foundational knowledge of IHME’s work, as well as core technical skills and collective problem-solving. Overall, the Data Extraction Analyst will be a critical member of an agile, dynamic team. This position is contingent on funding availability.

Responsibilities:

Research command

• Become familiar with substantive areas of expertise to understand the dimensions and uses of health data and the analytic underpinnings of different research streams.
• Work directly with researchers to trace back the source of data used in models and results, understand the context of the data, and ensure that they are relevant to the analyses themselves.

Data management and quality assessment

• Extract, format, and transform data from multiple sources according to set protocols in consultation with researchers to best meet their needs. Sources include literature, surveys, censuses, administrative records, vital registration systems, and disease registries, among others.
• Develop and use protocols to identify problems with datasets and routine extraction processes, rectify issues, and systematize processes for future work.
• Maintain, update, and interact with databases containing health data from multiple sources.
• Perform quality assurance and routine diagnostics on data and databases.
• Assess and contribute to decision-making about the definitions of fields for extraction and the organization and storage of input data.
• Perform literature reviews and other forms of data seeking.
• Archive, catalog, and annotate datasets according to Institute standards to build a common library of materials for use by a wide set of researchers.
• Document extraction processes in order to ensure consistency in extraction across research teams.
• Improve extraction processes in order to save time or simplify the extraction process and/or improve the quality of extractions.

Publications, presentations, and data requests

• Create text, tables, figures, and charts for presentations and publications.
• Provide referencing and other support for publications and presentations.
• Execute queries on databases to respond to the needs of senior researchers and external requests from collaborators, media, policymakers, donors, and other stakeholders.

General

• Communicate clearly and effectively while contributing as a member of the Institute.
• Work closely with other team members to assist with relevant tasks, facilitate learning new skills, and help resolve emerging problems on different projects.
• Attend relevant meetings, adhere to deadlines, and participate as a vital member to collectively advance team-level objectives.
• Serve as a resource to others in explaining approaches to data management and extraction.
• Participate in overall community of the Institute, carrying out duties as may be required for team members.

A commitment to working to alongside others at IHME to illuminate the health impacts of systemic racism and to work within IHME to make our organization more diverse and inclusive. See IHME’s DEI statement here:  http://www.healthdata.org/get-involved/careers/dei.

As a UW employee, you will enjoy generous benefits and work/life programs.  For detailed information on Benefits for this position, click here.

REQUIREMENTS

• Bachelor’s degree in sciences, global health, public health, or related field plus two years’ related experience, or equivalent combination of education