Hope Watson is an undergraduate kinesiology major who has made the most of her time at Temple: She won a university-wide healthcare analytics competition last year, and after graduating this spring she’ll be taking her Temple education to the United Kingdom, where she’ll be pursuing a graduate degree in epidemiology with a concentration in biostatistics at the University of Cambridge. She talked with us about her CPH experience and her passion for rare disease analytics.

What brought you to Temple?

Philadelphia has a lot going on in biotech – this is really a hub. And I wanted to stay close to home. I love my hometown – I love cheesesteaks and Conshohocken Amoroso rolls. I got excited about bioanalytics as a freshman, but I couldn’t have imagined how much of a launching pad Temple would be for me –things like the analytics competition, and the Temple global health conference. I’m in the honors college, which does awesome things as far as funding individual projects. The contacts with teachers, mentors, and people in the industry are really important. And the fact that Temple is so diverse makes it a safe place to engage in dialog.

How did you become interested in rare disease analytics?

A rare disease is one that affects less than 20,000 people in the United States, but there are over 7,000 of them. When I look from a population health perspective and see that 10 percent of the population is being affected by rare diseases and that we’re not doing much about it, that bothers me.

Is that something you would hope to work on after you graduate?

Definitely. I’m leaning toward the policy side, working from a department of health. Ultimately I’m looking at changing how we handle clinical trials with both policy and technology. A lot of what epidemiologists do when they graduate – and this is what I hope to do –is to design better clinical trials.

What’s the argument you have to make if you’re going to change how we run clinical trials?

When you get down to it, this is really a resource issue. It’s a matter of convincing companies to band together to make data infrastructures available so that each company doesn’t have to do the same thing. That’s not something companies are willing to do right now, and that is impeding drug innovation. There are tough things to overcome, but I feel like we’re moving in the right direction.

What do you think is the role of data in public health?

I feel that data puts the “public” in public health. You have to know how to work with huge, messy datasets, especially if you’re doing the policy side of things. People stay that statistics always lie. But that’s only true if you don’t know what those statistics mean, and if you’re not able to dissect them.

What do you appreciate about being in the College of Public Health?

One thing I like about CPH is that we house so many degrees. I like the different kinds of research that are going on. Dean Laura Siminoff has been looking at communication and decision-making in healthcare, while the Kinesiology Department looks at cell adaptations of cardiac tissue, biomarkers for traumatic brain injury, and so much more – and it’s all within the College of Public Health. For me, I want to see the high-level data research in a clinical application, so that’s why the College of Public Health is so important to me.

What impact have your professors had on your undergrad experience?

I’ve had some absolutely phenomenal professors. They’re so encouraging, and don’t hold me back from taking on new challenges. The college was so open to my taking graduate-level courses. I just reached out to professors, and they said, “Well, I’ve never had an undergrad do it, but I don’t see why not.” I like that. There’s been no hampering at all in my educational process, and the things that I’m reaching for.

Who stands out?

Ruth Ost, the honors college director, and my adviser in the Department of Kinesiology, Lindsay Raab. They let me know about the resources that have changed my experience here. My current multivariate biostatistics professor, Dr. Mark Schmitz, has also been incredible. I was apprehensive about taking his class as an undergrad. His response was, “If this is what you love, and this is what you want to do, then yes—come and be in my class, and learn and absorb this.”