Graduate student Andrew Carr to support VPGH research on problem gambling in Virginia

The Virginia Partnership for Gaming and Health advances Virginia’s coordinated response to gambling-related harm in part by analyzing data from the state’s Problem Gambling Helpline to inform public health policy.

This summer, Andrew Carr, a Master of Public Health student at VCU, will have a chance to dig deeper into who seeks help as a Postdoctoral Innovation Fellow. Housed in VCU’s Office of Innovation and Strategic Design, the fellowship supports high-impact research projects that catalyze institutional knowledge and design thinking in healthcare.

Carr was first introduced to the field of public health as an undergraduate in the Global Studies Department at the University of Virginia. He was initially interested in pursuing medical school but was curious about the interdisciplinary nature of public health.

After college, his career exploration continued, starting with a job at Keswick School, a therapeutic boarding school outside Charlottesville, Virginia. There, he considered becoming a therapist or an educator.

Eventually, however, he found his way back to public health.

“I talked to a lot of professors from college and friends who pursued their Master of Public Health,” he says. “They all said it’s one of the most versatile degrees in the healthcare field.”

Carr recently finished his first year of VCU’s M.P.H. program where he’s focused on building his skills in data management and analysis. In his first research project, he looked at how marketing companies and social media have targeted children and the negative impact on their attention spans.

That study led him to look at online gambling apps, where he recognized several similarities.
“Draft Kings and other apps use the same kind of algorithm methods to capture people’s attention and keep them there,” he says. “And they also target a pretty young population. It was a natural transition to my interest [in problem gambling].”

His earlier research relied on a dataset from the early 2000s, but this summer, he’ll use current data from the Virginia Problem Gambling Helpline to look for demographic and other trends in problem gambling across the state.

“I'm excited to look at data that’s been taken from real people and know exactly when the data was taken,” he says. “I’m looking forward to putting some of the pieces together.”