My first miniproject took place under the supervision of Prof Frances Griffiths from Warwick Medical school, and Dr Thomas House from Maths/Complexity.

I worked with data from the Agincourt Health and Socio-Demographic Surveillance System (HDSS), based in South Africa, with an aim to investigate links between chronic illness and refugee status. Almost a third of the population within the HDSS study site are of Mozambican origin, making up what is thought to be the largest monitored refugee population in the world.

South Africa is classified as an upper-middle income economy by the world bank, however it is ranked in the top 10 countries of the world for income inequality by the Gini Index; a measure of the extent to which the distribution of income among individuals within an economy deviates from a perfectly equal distribution. The Agincourt area is a poor, rural part of South Africa, with few job opportunities. There is a high level of HIV/AIDS, and hypertension and cardiovascular problems are becoming increasingly common.