Graduate / SOP for master in epidemiology; 'art of measurement' [3]

Hi All!
I'm applying for a master's program in epidemiology. Could anyone give me some advice?
I'm not a native speaker. Your feedback on any point is warmly welcomed!
Thanks!

Three years ago, when I was auditing my first lesson in epidemiology, I was amazed by the art of measurement. By that time, evoked by the stigma against patients living with chronic hepatitis B, I founded a student organization promoting awareness of hepatitis B on campus. Before the program started, I was to conduct a baseline survey. When designing the questionnaire, I asked myself: could stigma be measured? Is it correlated with level of knowledge or immunization status? Inchoate as it might have been, it was the first study I designed.

My education in preventive medicine has provided me with intensive training in medical science and clinical medicine. I started my exploration in health issues from a molecular level, when I worked in a research laboratory on epigenetics. Clinical training has prepared me the skills to investigate diseases and care for patients at individual level. However, it was my desire to protect health of my community by applying both quantitative and conceptual skills that shaped my career choice in public health.

My greatest accomplishments in the past three years have been a successful vaccine program and an educational program in my community, which in combination, protected over 800 medical/nursing students against the occupational hazard, hepatitis B virus (HBV). China is endemic of hepatitis B, with 1 in 13 chronically infected. As a bloodborne pathogen, HBV can be transmitted to healthcare workers via needlestick injuries. Yet my interview with medical/nursing students revealed that immunization rate remained low in my community, and education on occupational safety was absent. As the leader of the student organization, I talked to local health department to provide vaccines for free. To raise awareness of HBV, our team delivered an educational program to students in Fudan School of Medicine, School of Nursing and School of Public Health. Meanwhile, we started a campus-wide campaign to promote vaccination, featured with banners, posters, information boards and stands. Eventually, 756 medical/ nursing students got vaccinated and most groups in the educational program showed significant improvement in their knowledge.

As part of our project, the educational program called my attention to research design. Two sets of training tools on hepatitis B education were available. One is to utilize an online training; another is to use a book, Physician Guide to Hepatitis, as self-learning text. Both were developed by Asian Liver Centre (ALC) at Stanford University, but neither was tested in school settings. I applied non-equivalent comparison group design to study the effectiveness of different training tools by analyzing pre-training and post-training test scores, and I was responsible for subsequent data analysis. Our program provides valuable information for student organizations in other medical schools in China, who wish to improve hepatitis B knowledge and promote awareness of occupational safety.

I furthered my skills in data analysis during internship at ALC, Stanford, where I assisted in evaluation of an online training course. I worked from the cleaning of raw data till presenting the final results. The data was generated by the course website, consisting of demographics in the registration form, a pre-training test, a post-training test and a course evaluation survey. I had to match each person's information from the four datasets. The greatest hurdle was that there were no unique identifiers in the four datasets. Name can serve as an identifier, but there were hundreds of duplications due to multiple registrations or retaking the tests. To overcome the hurdle, I designed a strategy to match the personal information with best prediction, and wrote a Stata program to do it automatically. The problem of the identifier was finally solved with web technology, which extracted a unique ID for every entry in each dataset. However, it confirmed that my strategy has generated correct prediction for the vast majority.

My one year experience as an exchange student in University of Toronto broadened my perspective in public health, where I took courses in epidemiology, mathematical statistics and global health. I was so excited to immerse myself in numerous publications on health promotion, program management and evaluation. For me, it was an adventure in discovering a world of vibrant research community that I could not imagine in China. This learning experience enables me to organize community health promotion in a more systematic way, by conducting needs assessments, developing a logic model and designing evaluation strategies.

My experience with hepatitis B reminds me that ideas are not enough. It's through proactive service that we identify the needs of the communities and work hard to satisfy the health needs. This is especially true in China. As a developing country, the community needs for better health services are enormous, yet remain unmeasured and unattended. My experience in North America impressed on me the needs to build local capacity in research in developing world.

Recently I started my degree dissertation on a qualitative research on tuberculosis with Department of Epidemiology in my school. With a goal to solve problems in developing world and work for disadvantaged population, I chose infectious disease epidemiology as my future field...