Mei Sum Chan (she/her)
Health Analytics Consultant, Lane Clark & Peacock
Contact: Email: mei.chan@lcp.uk.com
LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/mei-sum-chan
When not at work you can be found...
Pre-pandemic, travelling off the beaten path and learning about some of the rest of the world.
Why did you join the DSxHE community?
DSxHE was the perfect intersection of my background and research interests in biostatistics and health inequalities. I’m keen to explore not just how data science can improve health equity, but also how our knowledge about health inequalities can improve data science. It was also refreshing to see such a diverse group of people come together to form the community.
What should people reach out to you for help on/with? (ie your community “offers”)
Anything interdisciplinary or ageing-related.
What would you like help with from members of the DSxHE community?
Your involvement and contributions in any way, e.g. sharing information, sharing experiences, building collaborations, hosting or helping with events, are very much appreciated!
What’s a topic in data science/health equity that you know/care a lot about - why is it important/interesting, tell us about it!
Inequalities in ageing. It is a highly multidisciplinary and complex topic, and most of us age - if we’re lucky enough to live that long. From the data science perspective, characterising ageing and predicting aspects of later life ageing (e.g. chronic disease and multimorbidity) from a wide range of known risk factors (biological, social and environmental) are really interesting areas to explore. Many ageing outcomes are currently used as indicators of health inequalities, e.g. life expectancies, and these contribute to wider debates on topics like health systems provision and organisation, welfare provision and fiscal planning.
What’s a recent article/book/video/blog/event you’ve come across on data science and/or health equity that you found interesting and why?
There are so many that I can’t keep track, so the community-sourced DSxHE library has been immensely helpful.
What’s a skill/expertise you have in data science/health equity - How did you learn/develop it and how might others do so to?
Connecting the dots between diverse and proximal disciplines such as statistics, epidemiology, actuarial science, demography, population health and philosophy. Through an insatiable curiosity in others’ research and being in highly multidisciplinary workplaces.
What is the punchline to your favourite joke?
“No, I didn’t say I was interesting, I said I was into resting”
What has been your favourite age so far and why?
Biological age (in the UK Biobank). So much so that I wrote my PhD thesis on it.
What movie, book, or TV show changed your life?
One Hundred Years of Solitude (translated) by Gabriel García Márquez. Among other things, it brilliantly illustrated how sometimes fact is stranger than fiction.
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