Alumnus Lawrence Vandervoort

Tell us your story!

I continued my thesis work for Folkhälsomyndigheten (FOHM). As a student, I ended up at FOHM by reaching out to lecturers who gave interesting presentations and KI staff with interesting profiles. Through this network, I got in touch with my eventual Master’s thesis supervisor. The opportunity to continue was offered by my supervisor at FOHM. When I moved to London, I started applying for jobs with the NHS and local authorities throughout London.

As PH intelligence officer, days do vary extensively and, with experience, projects change in scope and responsibility. My days consist checking data cleaning and validating a golden record resident database. This supports various projects around identifying health needs of residents with complex needs.

Understanding public health concepts (wider determinants of health), communicating stats and how they reflect health, all the courses on statistics came in handy (especially the influence of sample biases and the influence of missing data).

What is your advice to students

Make use of the various organisations beyond KI for your thesis. For them it is free work and for you it’s the start of a portfolio, something which can be described as work experience and a network.