Mitigate Negative GeoConvergence: Map Deprived Areas
Dr. Dana R. Thomson
Coordinator
IDEAMAPS Network
The emphasis of Dr. Thomson’s research is identification of "slum" residents and other populations who are under-represented in population data, and development of tools and methods to improve population data accuracy.
Dr. Thomson coordinates the IDEAMAPS Network to map slums, informal settlements, and other deprived urban areas routinely and accurately at scale in LMICs. She created GridSample.org to support survey practitioners in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) to select representative household surveys from gridded population datasets.
Previously, Dr. Thomson was a Researcher at Harvard Medical School supporting large-scale health system evaluations in Rwanda, Haiti, Mali, and other LMICs. In 2014-15, she was seconded to the University of Rwanda where she lectured and contributed to research capacity-strengthening under the Ministry of Health's Human Resources for Health programme. During that time, she supported over a dozen first-time first-authors to publish original research in international peer-reviewed journals, co-organized several practice-based workshops, and created a free online course for Population Survey Analysis.
Dr. Thomson has a BA in Geography from George Washington University, MSc in Global Health from Harvard School of Public Health, and an MSc and PhD in Social Statistics from University of Southampton.
