By Olivia Trani

To Jerry John Rawlings Mensah, working with data is like being a storyteller.

“When I summarize data and try to draw insights, it feels like telling a story through statistics,” he said. 

Mensah will receive a master’s degree in public health and a graduate certificate in genomics data science this month from Virginia Commonwealth University, and he plans to use his statistical storytelling talents to improve people’s health.

Mensah grew up in Ghana and was always interested in health care as a career. After a family member experienced a serious medical issue, he knew it was the right path.

“In middle school, my mother had to undergo surgery and stay at the hospital for an extended period of time. I was going to the hospital every morning before school and then in the afternoons after school,” he said. “At first I had a lot of fear, stress and anxiety, but the more time I spent at the hospital, the more I felt at home. I started thinking that this is a field where I could make an impact.”

Mensah’s initial goal was to attend medical school, but he didn’t have the necessary funds. Instead, he earned a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology and worked for several years at a medical laboratory, conducting health screenings, particularly for prostate cancer, and explaining the results for corporate clients.

As part of his job, he also presented reports on the overall health of a client company’s workforce and discussed strategies for fostering a healthier lifestyle. The experience opened his eyes to other avenues for making an impact.

 “There is an especially big need for public health professionals who can see long-term health trends and make recommendations on a community scale rather than just the individual,” Mensah said. 

With encouragement from his wife, Anasthesia, who is a VCU alum, he applied to the School of Public Health and was accepted into the Master of Public Health program. 

“When I started my program at VCU, I realized that the data analysis being taught in my courses had a lot of similarities to my previous work in Ghana,” Mensah said. “Both involved gaining insights into the health of a community, summarizing data and looking into potential health interventions. It just clicked right away.”

Mensah also sought opportunities to develop new skills, particularly in the field of artificial intelligence and machine learning. He worked with his master’s program manager to simultaneously pursue the School of Public Health’s graduate certificate in genomics data science. 

This focus led him to a prestigious internship at Wake Forest University’s Center for Artificial Intelligence Research. He helped assess the accuracy of machine learning models for small datasets, which are common when studying rare diseases. 

He also became involved with the VCU Cohort and Registry Administration Core’s Mid-Atlantic Twin Registry, a long-term research project that has been collecting health data on twins since the 1970s. Using AI models, Mensah helped digitize legacy health records collected decades ago and extract useful data.

“Jerry has a curiosity that won’t quit and a willingness to try new things,” said Elizabeth Chin Prom-Wormley, Ph.D., an associate professor in the School of Public Health’s Department of Epidemiology and scientific director of the MATR. “I credit Jerry with inspiring us to try AI to address the MATR digitization project. Thanks to his efforts, a problem that was taking days could now be handled in minutes.”

Mensah also has sought to connect his studies to the community. Through an initiative called Party with Data, Mensah helped organize events for local residents who participated in public health research led by VCU and community partners.

“Through Party with Data, we give these findings back to the community in a fun and engaging way that encourages conversations about health topics, such as diabetes, substance use or mental health,” he said.

For example, when VCU researchers conducted a series of focus groups to better understand the factors contributing to opioid overdoses and resources needed for residents, Mensah helped ensure the findings were accessible and useable for the public.

“Jerry and another team member translated our very dry and academic research into a series of fun and interesting game-show-style questions to share study findings with the community,” said Prom-Wormley, who leads the Party with Data initiative. “His efforts helped us build community awareness around the experiences of people facing substance use concerns in Richmond and the people who support them.”

Mensah’s capstone project for his master’s degree ultimately harmonized all of his experiences, applying his training in AI and public health to improve the accuracy of prostate cancer screenings – the same kind of tests he used while working in Ghana.

“One big challenge with these screening methods is that the tests are very sensitive, which causes people to be overdiagnosed with prostate cancer. This means that a number of people are unnecessarily subjected to expensive procedures, like MRIs and biopsies,” Mensah said. “Machine learning models can potentially help with analyzing health data and providing a better estimate of a person’s risk.”

Emmanuel A. Taylor, Dr.P.H., a professor in the School of Public Health’s Department of Health Policy and senior director of Global Cancer Health Equity and Partnerships at VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center, was a mentor for Mensah and praised his commitment.

“By exploring the use of AI to improve the screening and prediction of prostate cancer, Jerry’s findings will aid urologists and their patients in shared decision-making after a PSA test, as well as provide a tool for health promotion and health literacy among populations at high risk of developing prostate cancer,” Taylor said.

Beyond academics, Mensah embraced another achievement while at VCU: fatherhood. He and his wife welcomed their daughter, Anaia, this past September. After graduation, Mensah will finish an analytical data science co-op with the biopharma company GSK, and he is considering pursuing a Ph.D. – but at the moment, he is most looking forward to watching his daughter grow.