Summarizing Health Metrics: From Quarto to CRAN

Federica Gazzelloni

2025-04-12

Introduction

Welcome! In this session, I’ll walk you through how I developed a project to summarize health metrics using R and Quarto, and how I published the results as an R package on CRAN.

Federica is a Statistician and an Actuary contributing to various open-source initiatives, such as R-Ladies Rome, the Actex Learning team, and the DSLC.io, former R for Data Science community.
She works as an Independent Researcher, and an advocate for open knowledge-sharing in data science.

📝 Agenda

Overview of the project
The writing Journey
Tools: Quarto, R, and CRAN

🔥 Overview of the project

book + R package

🗣 Quote

“As a collaborator with the Global Burden of Disease study, I found myself collecting insights, methods, and visualizations on how we measure health and mortality. After the 2021 GBD round, I decided it was time to bring it all together—for myself, for students, and for anyone interested in global health metrics.”

Looking back at how it all started

📘 Book Project Timeline

2019
COVID-19 identified as a deadly virus
→ Began collecting information on health metrics and global patterns.
2020
Collaborator with IHME
→ Published insights from various health studies and data projects.
2023
Reviewer & Project Proposal
→ Reviewed the {mlr3} book with detailed feedback
→ Proposed my book project to a CRC Press editor

✍️ The writing Journey

Repeat as needed

🛠️ Tools: Quarto, R, and CRAN

Lessons Learned & Best Practices

Not all information is useful
Keep it simple
Stick to the agenda
Keep in mind everything you’ve done for your reader
Mind the publication process and LaTeX intricacies

⁇ Q&A

Thank You!

Connect with me! 🔥 On Social Networks: https://linktr.ee/federicagazzelloni