Responsibilities at the Trauma Foundation
The Trauma Foundation gave me the first job I had out of graduate school in US. I came from Singapore, got my Masters in Statistics from the University of Maryland in College Park, moved to San Francisco, and looked for a job. And I got one with Liz McLoughlin and Peggy Skaj, coordinating the study of emergency department response to victims of domestic violence. I visited six hospitals from Santa Cruz to Napa, and hired nurses to conduct the surveys. I went through the medical records in those hospitals, and made sure that we got the data we needed on how these emergency departments talked about and treated women surviving domestic violence. Then I ran the analyses and helped write up the articles from the study. I worked on the Profile of Injury in San Francisco, and with smaller advocacy projects that were underway in our shop. Through these studies, I integrated real world experience with what I learned during graduate school. During this time, I got my green card, permitting me to work and remain in the United States.
Liked most about the Trauma Foundation
I really liked the people I worked with. We respected each other’s work, let each of us do what we did best, and shared our interests. I think of it like being in a start-up company. Everyone really believed in what we were doing, and we really liked each other.
Learnings still useful
I learned a lot on running analyses, survey research, program evaluation and how to work collaboratively. I became familiar with different healthcare data: claims, hospitalization discharge, mortality, emergency discharge, paramedic responses for 9-1-1, posion control and drug abuse. This experience was very valuable to me in building a good foundation to understand different large datasets later in my career. Mostly, I see my time at the Trauma Foundation as a time to transit from being a graduate student to working in the real world. I began to understand how hospitals functioned, and the importance of people skills. I’ve learned enormously at the three places I’ve worked since leaving the Trauma Foundation, but I’m grateful for the good grounding I got with you all.
Now
I’ve had three jobs since I left the Trauma Foundation. First, I was a
Marketing Database Analyst in the Consumer Credit Group at Wells
Fargo Bank conducted data mining, analysis and developed predictive models (e.g. retention, migration, cross-sells models). It is amazing what data are collected everywhere - at ATM machines, on-line, bill payments. I have also worked at Kaiser,
Case Management Institute, as a Senior Program Evaluation Consultant conducted programs evaluation (e.g. Inpatient Palliative Care) and developed a readmission predictive model to better serve patients in it delivery system. Currently, I am employed as a Statistician at USCF providing statistical analysis, programming and data management support for investigators conducting epidemiologic studies of risk factors for functional and neurologic diseases in aging populations consisting of Mexican descent followed from 1998-2008.
I thrive when I am learning new skills, exploring new approaches to data.
Who knows what would be my next venture?
Contact
Replace "at" with "@" - we wish to thwart the spammers!
Email address: greg.nah at ucsf.edu
7/2/10