SSM ECRs featuring… Samantha Ofili!
Samantha Ofili is a PhD student at the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Strathclyde.
 | Samantha Ofili University of Strathclyde SSM member since: 2019 SSM participation: Newsletter subcommittee 2019-2022 Topics of interest: Mental Health, Statistics, Research Communications |
What inspired you to pursue a career in public health?
I became interested in epidemiology during my undergraduate degree in Neuroscience. I remember having a class about the Framingham study and I became really interested in what we could discover about public health through studies like that. I wanted to learn more about it so started a masters that was focused on psychiatric epidemiology.
What excites you about working in research now?
I’ve enjoyed learning about different and engaging ways of communicating research and ensuring people are well informed. I think research is most exciting when it is accessible. I think there are lots of innovative things happening through podcasts and social media and fact-checking organisations that I like to keep up with outside my own research.
What area of social medicine/public health are you interested in?
I’ve mainly worked on projects about population mental health in older adults and in young children. Coming from a life sciences background, I used to be more interested in biological risk factors but over the years I have become more interested in social determinants of health. I’ve also become more interested in the availability and quality of data to help us understand these social determinants better.
Can you tell us a bit about a project you’re working on now?
I am working with the Child Mental Health in Education (ChiME) group. My project looks at neighbourhood differences in preschool mental health in Glasgow from 2010-2017. It’s based in the Statistics department so it focuses on developing statistical models to investigate the relationships between neighbourhoods over space and time and to explore what neighbourhood factors might contribute to variation in mental health.
What do you hope this will lead to?
I’m hoping this research can help inform decision making about what kinds of place-based interventions would be best for supporting early child development.
Bonus question from SSM member Mairead Ryan: Are there any papers that you regularly return to?
Since my undergraduate degree I regularly return to textbooks and papers written by Andy Field whenever I feel like I need a clear explanation of a statistical concept.
To keep up to date with Sam’s work, you can follow her on Twitter @saofili2, or get in touch via email.
SSM ECR features is a blog series that celebrates early career researchers. Each month we meet a member we admire, learn more about their work and find out what and who inspires them. To find out more visit socsocmed.org.uk/blog or email ecr.ssm@gmail.com.