This episode focuses on an interdisciplinary approach towards health, mortality, and the socio-economic implications and determinants of inequalities. In conversation with Dijana Spasenoska, we explore this topic through a new, fresh lens.

Dijana Spasenoska is a PhD candidate in Demography and Population Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research focuses on the impact of socio-economic and political changes on health and mortality; particularly changes that happened as a result of the transition from communism to democracy in the Western Balkan countries.

She is interested in understanding health and determinants to poor health, and her previous degrees gave her the tools to understand it from different perspectives. While her undergraduate degree in Biochemistry from Imperial College London, has given her a perspective in understanding diseases at the molecular level, during her postgraduate degree in Global Population Health from the LSE, she explored how poor health is attributable to long-term accumulation of harmful experiences and can be affected by other macro-level conditions and events.

In addition, Dijana also has experience in working with international organizations, such as the World Health Organization and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, on projects focusing on generating evidence and using evidence based decision-making in low- and middle- income countries to promote coverage and equity of immunization. She has worked closely with numerous countries where she supported the implementation of a methodology she has developed.