Keyu Li

Keyu joined the Health Economics Research Centre (HERC) and St Edmund Hall as a DPhil student in 2022. Her supervisors are Philip Clarke and Laurence Roope.

Her current DPhil research focuses on the intersection of remote sensing and health outcomes, and is structured around three main chapters:

• Changes in Luminosity and Mortality in Malaysia using the National Diabetes Registry (NDR): investigating whether increases in luminosity - used as a proxy for economic development - are associated with reduced mortality risk among diabetes patients in Malaysia.
• Impacts of Air Pollution on Health Outcomes in Malaysia using NDR: examining the impact of air pollution on mortality and cardiometabolic outcomes among diabetes patients in Malaysia. Satellite fire data from Indonesia is used as an instrumental variable as an exogenous source of variation.
• Assessment of Global Socio-economic and Health Inequalities Using Luminosity and Multi-Country Survey Data (CANDOUR): analysing health inequalities within and across countries, using luminosity as a proxy for income to calculate and compare concentration indices with traditional survey-based measures.

The overarching aim of the thesis is to explore how the integration of remote sensing data, such as night time lights and fire radiative power, with health surveys and medical records can help assess the impact of environmental and socioeconomic conditions on health outcomes and inequalities.

Prior to her DPhil, Keyu graduated with a BSc in Economics from University College London in 2021 and received an MSc in Local Economic Development from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2022.