Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - January/February 2009 - (Page 12)

O f Math and by Nathan Georgette T hree summers ago, I noticed that one of my brother’s assigned summer reading books had been sitting unread for a couple of weeks. My curiosity finally got to me. When he was otherwise engaged, I sneaked Tracy Kidder’s intriguingly titled Mountains Beyond Mountains to my room. The book tells the story of Dr. Paul Farmer, one of the founders of Partners in Health (PIH), an organization that works with poor communities to combat disease and poverty. Mountains Beyond Mountains describes Farmer’s work in Haiti, where PIH first applied its novel community-based healthcare model emphasizing a holistic approach to caring for the indigent. Farmer’s work reveals the true power of medicine: to heal, to feel, and to change the world. The book had a profound effect on me. I knew I wanted someday to use the power of medicine to help poor people suffering from disease and malnutrition. Until I read that book, my academic interests were firmly rooted in mathematics. I had asked for advanced Measles mathematics textbooks for Christmas since elementary school. I had completed three middle-school science fair projects on applied math. But now, guided by my concerns about the state of global health and my passion for problem-solving, I was about to arrive on the doorstep of a new interest: epidemiology. At the 008 Davidson Fellows reception, Nathan was awarded a $10,000 scholarship from the Davidson Institute for Talent Development for his project, “Novel Herd Immunity Threshold Analysis Incorporating Population Dynamics and Gradual Immunization.” The Accidental Epidemiologist I was searching for a topic combining medicine and mathematics for the science project required by my tenth-grade research class when I happened upon the World Health Organization’s description of measles. Some unsettling numbers got my attention: In 2006 alone, measles had caused 242,000 deaths. And nearly every one of them could have been prevented with an injection that has been available for over 40 years and costs less than one U.S. dollar. I grabbed my marble composition notebook and started to write. In 2002, around 2.5 million children under the age of five died from vaccine-preventable diseases (VPDs). Many people may wonder how VPDs can persist in our modern world. The answer is simple and stark: national wealth and disease burden are inversely proportional, and VPDs, such as measles, primarily affect the poorest and youngest. For these reasons, I narrowed my focus to studying the spread of VPDs and improving VPD outbreak control. VPDs are not the only health threat facing poor populations: Tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, and malaria, among other diseases, also inflict tremendous suffering and death upon the poor. I considered these other pressing medical issues as I examined the immunization strategies for VPDs. If I could develop cheaper ways to stop a VPD outbreak, health agencies could redirect their limited funds to these other areas of dire medical need. Stopping Outbreaks, with Numbers I began to study mathematical epidemiology in greater detail. I scoured the internet and read scientific journals, and during my research I came across a central epidemiological concept: the herd immunity threshold, which is the percentage of the population that must achieve January/February 009 1 imagine

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - January/February 2009

Imagine Magazine - John Hopkins - January/February 2009
Contents
Letters
Big Problems
In My Own Words
Witness to a Pandemic
An Ounce of Prevention
Of Math and Measles
Predicting the Next Pandemic
Medicine, Medicine Everywhere
Food Matters
Looking for a Challenge? Try Summer College!
CTY: The Real Deal
Hot Topic
Selected Opportunities & Resources
Off the Shelf
Word Wise
Middle Ground
One Step Ahead
Exploring Career Options
Planning Ahead for College
Students Review
Creative Minds Imagine
Sudoku
Knossos Games

Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - January/February 2009