Turning Data Into Health Care Insights

This past spring, students enrolled in L&C’s Applied Data Science Practicum worked with the Multnomah County Health Department to produce original research on cancer-related deaths over the last decade. Which demographics are most at risk for tobacco-associated cancer deaths in the area? Is there a correlation between geographic location and cancer mortality? Small groups worked together over the semester to pursue the research question of their choice, generating new and informative insights about health in our local area.

Students in L&C's Applied Data Science PracticumThe partnership builds on the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) three-year collaborative grant to Lewis & Clark and the University of Arizona for the project entitled “Collaborative Research: HDR DSC: Building Capacity in Data Science through Biodiversity, Conservation, and General Education.” Professor of Biology Greta Binford spearheads Lewis & Clark’s work with the grant, which is designed to strengthen and build new networks for data science education.

“All along, our goal has been to create an educational model that can be applied broadly, working with stakeholders who face data problems we can help address,” says Binford. “For students, data science is another major tool in their toolbox that can help them advance knowledge. It allows them to follow their curiosity and not hit a wall because so many problems can be solved by big-data analysis.”

Binford observes that students often come to Lewis & Clark with enthusiasm for a given subject—the protection of endangered species, or the environment, or public health—and find that acquiring data science skills empowers them to make sense of information that is foundational to that field. “It cracks open students’ realities, showing them what they can do, so that the sky’s the limit,” she says.

The NSF grant enabled Lewis & Clark to fund a select number of post-practicum internships with the Health Department, including a position for Claire Baco BA ’25, who minored in data science. “The practicum required us to piece together our coding skills with communication skills, research skills, and software tools like GitHub to mimic actual workplace projects,” says Baco. “It tied together information from the minor in a way that prepared me for the work world better than any other individual college experience.”

Baco’s final project looked into trends around tobacco-related cancer deaths, finding that veterans were at higher risk than nonveterans, and men were at higher risk than women, among other concerns. (The data, which was anonymized and confidential, spanned from 2014 to 2023, allowing students to calculate mortality rates per 100,000 individuals.) Baco’s summer internship with the Health Department introduced her to “what a career in epidemiology might look like,” a path she is now considering.

Source: "Tobacco-Related Cancer Deaths in Multnomah County," compiled by Claire Baco BA '25 and Anneliese Haberkamp BA '25.

A career in public health is also on the table for Jessica Naworski BA ’26, who called the practicum a “reaffirmation” of her decision to dig deeper into the field. Through researching the relationship between cancer deaths and geographic location, she was able to sharpen her skills in statistical analysis, data visualization, and coding in the programming language R—the building blocks of a career that involves data science.

Source: "Cancer Mortality Rates by Geography in Multnomah County," compiled by Isabella Moore BA '27 and Jessica Naworski BA '26.

Jeremy McWilliams, head of digital services at Watzek Library, was instrumental in students’ navigation of their course projects, drawing from his own experience in the field. “One lesson I keep learning over and over at data science conferences is that coding is one thing, but data scientists also need to be effective presenters of data,” McWilliams says. In the practicum, students were tasked not just with managing and cleaning the data, but with creating a website that could walk an audience through the results in an effective way.

“Our partnership with Lewis & Clark College’s Applied Data Science class has been invaluable,” says Charlene McGee, the Health Department’s prevention and health promotion program director. “This collaboration provided an opportunity for the next generation of public health leaders to learn about the local Public Health Authority. The students had the opportunity to receive mentorship and to apply the skills they learned in class to analyze local cancer data directly impacting our community’s health.”

At the end of the semester, students presented their findings to three representatives from the Health Department, hearing direct feedback on the significance of their research. Sophie Homolka BA ’26 continued on from the practicum to an internship with the Health Department before joining the CDC John R. Lewis Scholars Public Health Training Program at UCLA—one of just 35 students selected for the competitive summer cohort. At UCLA, she interned with the nonprofit Saint Barnabas Senior Services in Los Angeles and worked on a research project examining how stigma affects health-seeking behaviors among transgender women sex workers living with HIV.

“It’s one thing to code and analyze data in an academic or controlled research setting, but applying those skills to real public health datasets helped me see how data directly translates into community impact,” Homolka says about the practicum. “The course not only provided the technical skills I needed but also taught me how to work across disciplines, communicate findings clearly, and approach data with cultural humility. Those lessons have been invaluable as I move toward graduate studies in epidemiology and global health.”

Data Science