Finding Humanity in Data
By: Orrin Tiberi
Tags: Health, Data Science, Gender Equality

A local clinic in Iganga town, Mercy Health Centre, is a step in the long process of healing for many rural Ugandans. Photo courtesy of the author.

It is hard to be empathetic when looking at numbers. A summary statistic of family planning usage is an incomplete and inefficient way to tell each individual woman’s story. Nor does the number of people who receive their HIV status capture the pre-test anxiety or jubilation over good news. Numbers can be celebrated, but they fall far short of creating a link between end users and health providers.

Last year, I worked as a monitoring and evaluation officer in rural Uganda, so was (and still am in my current employment) confronted daily with numbers. I use data to show whether programs are having the desired effect and to keep partners and staff up-to-date on progress and impact. During my time in Uganda as a Global Health Corps fellow, I had the opportunity to see the faces those numbers represented when I helped support an impact evaluation in the villages where my placement organization, the Uganda Village Project, works. We collected data in 24 villages that are part of their flagship program, the Healthy Villages Initiative, as well as in 40 non-intervention villages to serve as a control.

During data collection, I had the opportunity to travel with a team of enumerators out into the villages on a daily basis. In order to reach a representative sample of the village, we surveyed 15 randomly selected households. Traveling through the villages, I was able to witness life in rural Iganga District and see how access to health care, or lack thereof, has influenced the local populous’ life. Seeing the village and hearing the community’s stories of frustration and heartbreak directly resulting from poor access to quality health services renewed my passion for working with disenfranchised and marginalized populations.

But by understanding that mother’s story and the local context it becomes much easier to respectfully create and sustain programs that address the lack of services to make healthier family planning decisions. This is necessary if we are to create a future for all that is healthful and happy.

By actually meeting the people the data I worked with represented, and being able to come back and view the data as people I met and interacted with, I have found more empathy in both my analysis of the numbers and my daily life. It was, and will continue to be, hard to analyze a household with 13 children under the age of 20 and not have a reaction. The health of the mother, the children, and the family are all compromised by that situation. But by understanding that mother’s story and the local context, it becomes much easier to respectfully create and sustain programs that address the lack of services to make healthier family planning decisions. This is necessary if we are to create a future for all that is healthful and happy.

How can we instill that sense of origin and purpose into our everyday dealings with data and numbers? It is difficult, but I think through experiences such as Global Health Corps, or any direct service experience, we can begin to build the empathy that is so desperately needed for comprehensive and informed health and policy decisions.