Turning health data into action for equity

For Valentine Golden Ghanem, health data is more than numbers; it is a reflection of who is included—and excluded—within national systems of care.

In his recently published Cureus study, Ghanem adopts a systems-level epidemiological perspective, shifting attention away from individual patient outcomes toward the structural determinants of health insurance coverage.

His findings indicate that district-level literacy rates and spatial accessibility are among the strongest predictors of NHIS participation, underscoring the social dimensions of healthcare exclusion.

By combining spatial autocorrelation analysis with public health theory, the research reframes health insurance enrolment as a governance challenge rather than a behavioural failure. The study has implications for health communication strategies, decentralised policy planning, and equitable resource allocation.

Ghanem currently serves as Principal Biomedical Scientist at the Cocoa Clinic under Ghana COCOBOD, where he has accumulated over a decade of experience in laboratory medicine, diagnostics, and health service administration. His professional trajectory reflects a deliberate transition from clinical laboratory practice to population-level health systems analysis, grounded in empirical research.

He holds an MSc in Public Health from the University of Suffolk, graduating with distinction, with academic specialisation in health policy, epidemiology, and health systems management. This foundation informs his current research agenda, which focuses on translating scientific evidence into actionable national health policy recommendations.

Ghanem’s work represents a growing cohort of African health scientists leveraging advanced analytics to strengthen institutional decision-making and promote equity-oriented healthcare reform.

Click here for the original publication: https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.101984